Running water is coming back to Buncombe after Helene’s floodwaters ripped municipal lines out of the ground, leaving thousands without the vital utility.

But many residents, businesses, and government operations have decided to play it safe and dig a well.

According to data obtained by Asheville Watchdog, 103 residents and businesses applied to drill wells across Buncombe from Oct. 1 to Oct. 14 — and 25 of those requests came in the past four days.

Churches, schools, an Ingles grocery store, a residential mental health facility, a hospital, senior living areas, an outdoor supply store, an auto shop, and homeowners were among those asking for permits to create a new source of water on their properties. 

Though water services are slowly returning to city neighborhoods and unincorporated areas, there is still no official timeline for when all of Buncombe will have water restored, leading many to find another solution and a backup in case of another outage. 

Helene knocked out water for so many homes that 90,000 to 100,000 people across the region were still without water on Oct. 13, according to Asheville Water Resources spokesman Clay Chandler.

It is the second environmental crisis to break Asheville’s water system in less than two years: Frozen pipes and equipment during the 2022-2023 holiday season left many in the city without water for 11 days.

Driven by Helene’s devastation and the recent memory of that other system failure, Buncombe is granting permits quickly: As of Monday, the county had granted 52 well-drilling permits, according to the data.

Applicants include city and county schools. Asheville City Schools Superintendent Maggie Fehrman said last week the school system doesn’t want to wait for the city to restore water, and would begin installing wells on school campuses. 

The home services website Angie’s List estimates the average cost to drill a well ranges from $25 to $65 per foot drilled, “although $25 to $35 per foot is a good guideline for most projects. Expect to pay more when digging in remote areas or through rocky, sloped, dry, or low-quality soil.”

Buncombe County’s well permit fee is $350.

Halfway through October, the number of well permit applications is nearly double than it was for the entire month of May, the previous busiest month of 2024, when there were 56.

Residents and organizations filed 386 well permit applications between Jan. 1 and Sept. 26 this year, according to the data. 

Backups and quality control

The surge in demand is hitting the county’s permitting office and local drilling contractors.

“So much going on right now, it’s unreal,” said Jerry Fowler, owner of Ace Well & Pump Services in Leicester. “It was already backed up before this. Most of the drillers were four, five, or six months behind before this came out.”

But people and businesses are desperate for alternatives, Fowler said. “They’re wanting to get off the city so they won’t have to go through this again,” he said.

Others want greater control over the quality of their water. A resident on Delaware Avenue in Asheville, who did not want her name used for privacy reasons, said she was worried about contamination in city water.

“We have concerns about potential contamination for our water system,” said the resident, who did not yet have running city water Tuesday. She said she and her family are concerned about “what’s been leaking into the pipes, what’s going to remain residual in the pipes, you know, the thought that potentially well water could be safer in the long run. That’s our main concern.”

Asheville on Oct. 14 announced a boil water notice for all customers, explaining that water will be contaminated “due to impacts from Hurricane Helene including the potential for untreated water in the distribution system from pipe breaks and levels of turbidity that exceed Safe Drinking Water Act standards initially used to restore water pressure.”

Wells are also prone to contamination. Asheville is handing out well water testing kits and pointing to a Helene recovery dashboard by Northeastern University to help well owners take care of new or damaged systems.

FEMA to the rescue

In Candler, Pastor Steve Smith said Good News Baptist Church decided to drill a well for congregants. He filed for a permit Oct. 10 and was approved soon after.

“Any time the water’s disrupted here at the church, it would just be so much better for us if we had a well,” Smith said. “All of our people that are members of the church that have no water, we could provide water for them, and we just feel like it would be in the best interest of the church.”

Church leadership had been considering a well for some time before Helene, Smith said.

“We actually had talked about this many times,” Smith said. “I guess this just gave us the motivation to quit talking about it and go ahead and do it.”

Mission Hospital in Asheville, which has been relying on water tanks and trucks, also decided to drill a well. So did other medical facilities in the area.

Leadership at Aston Park Health Center on Brevard Road, a nursing facility that houses 120 residents, began talking about digging a well immediately after the storm. 

“We do, like everybody else does, a lot of disaster planning,” said Ted Goins, president of Lutheran Services of the Carolinas, of which Aston is a member. But, he said, no one imagined that any health care facility would be without water for this long, he said. “For us, water is just as vital as electricity, especially with 120 residents that need to go to the bathroom, that need all their needs met, and that’s their home.” 

Goins applied for a permit on Oct. 10, according to the Buncombe data. Before that, Aston brought in a water truck. 

But then the Federal Emergency Management Agency intervened. 

“God bless FEMA,” Goins said. “They came in and helped us put in place an entire tank system that helped us run our entire building.”

That lessened but didn’t eliminate the need for a well. Aston still did not have running water when the drilling company arrived on campus Tuesday. 

The facility might never need the well water, Goins said, but now they will be prepared just in case.

“I don’t know how anybody could have foreseen such a thing as this,” he said. “I mean, it’s like preparing for a meteor.”

Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Andrew R. Jones is a Watchdog investigative reporter. Email arjones@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s local reporting during this crisis is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

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