So much of the human spirit in Appalachia centers on community. For hundreds of years we have supported one another during good times and bad. And in 2024, there was plenty of bad.

Our world was turned upside down in September when Tropical Storm Helene caused such unimaginable loss of life and destruction. Even now, nearly three months after the flood waters subsided, we are left with so many questions. How should we rebuild? Will there be more frequent, more intense storms in our future? How can we help those who lost so much?

As a photographer accompanying Asheville Watchdog’s reporters in chronicling Helene’s aftermath, I have seen folks at their best and worst. I’ve witnessed enormous resilience, tenacity and sense of community as fellow residents cope with the loss of loved ones, their homes, their businesses.

Truth be told, those strengths were on display all year, as our region dealt with serious issues, ranging from the federal sanctions against Mission Hospital to a presidential election like none in modern history.

As the year ends, I am sharing a collection of Watchdog images I captured in 2024 that I believe highlight the challenges we’ve faced and our hopes for the future. Some capture the biggest news events of the year and others portray the subjects of the stories our reporters produced.

They include Missy Harris, a former Mission Hospital chaplain who described working under HCA management as a staggering “moral injury”; a woman known as Patient No. 12, whose delay in treatment at the hospital was chronicled by federal investigators; and DeWayne Barton, whose historically Black community is in the crosshairs of the Interstate 26 Connector project.

Light and composition drove many of my choices, such as a photo I took of PEAK Academy Executive Director Kidada Wynn, whose school faced a federal civil rights complaint that John Boyle chronicled in January.

Another image features Compass Point resident Norma Peeler, who figured prominently in a column John wrote about the first year of that permanent supportive housing facility. I chose one photo because it was both whimsical and illustrative of a serious demographic challenge our area faces. And one image, which accompanied a story looking at Buncombe’s recycling challenges, stands as a sobering reminder of just how much waste we generate.

This collection illustrates the tapestry of our community, the year none of us will forget and the commitment The Watchdog has to bringing you stories that matter.

Photographer Starr Sariego’s photos have been featured in exhibitions in Asheville and across the country. Contact her at ssariego@avlwatchdog.org. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

Related

Today’s round of questions, my smart-aleck replies and the real answers:

Question: My question is related to the waterways around western North Carolina and their health. I live near the Swannanoa River. The past few weeks the river has been a blue/green color. It’s almost glacial looking. Some are saying this color is a result of all the toxins from Hurricane Helene. Can you please weigh in? Is there active testing on our rivers like the French Broad, Swannanoa, etc?

My answer: I mean, beyond the pickup trucks, semi trailers, plastic pipes, broken trees and Dumpsters still lodged in the rivers, they seem pretty healthy.

Real answer: The experts I talked to agree that it’s most likely a natural phenomenon related to the flood, scouring of rocks and removal of waterway sediment, and not to pollutants.

Philip Prince, a geologist and adjunct professor at Virginia Tech University, has been studying Helene’s effects in western North Carolina. While he hasn’t specifically covered the water color issue, he has a theory why it’s happening.

First, he surmises that all of the work being done in and around the water channels continues to cause rocks to be ground up. The storm also scoured the rocks, creating a similar effect.

“If you take rock and you grind it up or joggle it around, that dust that you get, if it gets suspended in the water, it makes that color,” Prince said. “Which is why the comparison to a glacial (waterway) is probably pretty apt, because glacier movement over rock essentially does the same thing — it takes pieces of rock and it grinds them against each other, and it makes, basically, rock powder. And when that rock powder gets in the water, it will turn it sort of like a bright, milky blue or green.”

Helene rearranged the rocks in a lot of streams and rivers, which resulted in a lot of heavy equipment being used, sometimes in the streambeds, to rearrange them or even reroute the waterways some. 

The natural scouring effect that occurred during Helene also may play a role.

“The stream beds where they haven’t had an excavator drive around in them, they were really scoured by this event,” Prince said. “The rocks that were left, they normally have oxidation and scum on them, so they’re dark. Many rocks were just brilliant ghost white after this — it was literally like they got pressure washed.”

That can create a different reflection scenario.

“If the water is clear — if the water does not have a lot of suspended material in it — the sunlight coming down hitting that white rock on the river bottom and reflecting off and coming back up through the water, that will change the color of it,” Prince said. “That will make the water look different.”

It could also be somewhat of a combination of the two — brighter bottom rocks and some suspended rock dust that creates the colorization.

In some rivers in America, suspended limestone particles create a green-blue effect. But Prince said in our mountains there is “a near complete absence of limestone rocks around here, unless it’s brought in as crush.”

There is a limestone quarry in Fletcher, but that’s unusual. Most of the rock here is gneiss or schist, which are both very similar to granite.

Anna Alsobrook, the French Broad watershed science and policy manager at MountainTrue, an Asheville environmental nonprofit, said she has noticed the blue-green coloring. She surmises that the coloring is “due to all the scouring from the hurricane.”

“Flood waters moved tons of sediment, exposing more bedrock, and wiping it clean,” Alsobrook said. “So, maybe there’s more mineral deposition since there’s more contact with the actual rock (versus sediment), or maybe it’s more of a light reflection thing, since the light is bouncing off rock rather than sediment.”

Alsobrook said she doesn’t think “it has anything to do with any particular influx of pollutants in the waterways.”

Regarding those pollutants and testing, French Broad Riverkeeper Hartwell Carson, who also works at MountainTrue, told me the organization received another round of water and sediment samples from around the French Broad Watershed in mid-December.

Samples came from the Nolichucky River in Erwin, Tennessee; the Nolichucky downstream of Erwin; the Swannanoa River in Swannanoa and Biltmore Village; and the French Broad River at Westfeldt Park, Woodfin, Marshall and Hot Springs. They also tested Mud Creek downstream of Hendersonville and the North Toe River downstream of Spruce Pine.

“We found a variety of pollutants but feel encouraged about what we found and the levels of the pollutants,” Carson said, noting MountainTrue has analyzed the results with the help of other water experts. “We continue to find a host of metals in the samples, but for the most part these metals are not above background levels, are metals that are not very problematic to human health or the environment and are at fairly low levels.”

They did find “some pollutants with higher concerns around toxicity, such as trichloroethene (TCE), pyrene, and diesel range organics (a type of petroleum hydrocarbon). 

“Trichloroethene, or TCE, was found in the sediment at Charles D. Owen Park along the Swannanoa River in Swannanoa,” Carson said. “TCE is volatile, meaning it readily evaporates into the air at room temperature, where people can sometimes smell it.”

TCE is a solvent used to strip paint, remove grease from metal and spots from clothing.

“The results found in our sample were 7.19 micrograms per kilogram, which is much lower than most state regulatory limits,” Carson said.

Carson said pyrene, a natural component of coal tar, crude oil and fossil fuels, was found at 286 micrograms per kilogram in the Woodfin sediment sample along the French Broad River.

“The health effects of brief exposures to pyrene are unknown,” Carson said. “Longer-term animal studies show that pyrene can cause nephropathy (kidney disease) and decreased kidney weight. Based on the regulatory levels we studied, this level does not appear to be an alarming level.”

MountainTrue also found acetone in several samples, including from the Nolichucky downstream of Erwin, Swannanoa sediment at Charles D. Owen Park and Biltmore Village, and sediment samples from the French Broad in Marshall and Woodfin.

“Because of the low level of acetone found and toxicity of acetone, we aren’t terribly concerned about the exposure this pollutant presents,” Carson said.

MountainTrue also tested for the impact of any fuel remaining in flood waters or sediment.

“None of the samples we tested showed gasoline range organics, but five samples were present for diesel range organics,” Carson said, noting they were all in sediment samples. 

They were from these locations: the North Toe at Penland (5.7 milligrams per kilogram, or mg/kg), French Broad River at Woodfin (37.4 mg/kg), French Broad River in Marshall (16.9 mg/kg), the Swannanoa River at Charles D. Owen Park (69.7 mg/kg) and Biltmore Village (74 mg/kg).

“According to an N.C. State Extension article about diesel range organics in soil for gardening, these levels would be classified as low or moderate,” Carson said. 

Question: If Asheville City water has been deemed potable since Nov. 18, why as of late November/early December were Mission Hospital and the VA Medical Center still bringing in water in tanker trucks? Is there something that the hospitals know that the city hasn’t shared with everyone else?

My answer: I suspect the lead in the water was messing with the X-ray machines.

Real answer: Mission Hospital spokesperson Nancy Lindell explained the hospital’s decisions surrounding this issue.

“After the City of Asheville lifted the boil water advisory, our team began the process of transitioning back to municipal water,” Lindell said in early December. “While we have continued to rely on the wells HCA Healthcare drilled in the storm’s aftermath and water brought in via tanker trucks, Mission Health conducted independent testing of the water at our sites within the City.”

Lindell said then that its test results “concur with the City of Asheville that the water is potable,” Lindell said. 

“As the tankers that have been supplying water for the past two months move out and municipal water is turned back on, there should be no noticeable effects for our patients, visitors or colleagues,” Lindell said. Mission resumed using city water the first week of December.

At the Charles George VA Medical Center, spokesperson Kathie Ramos said the facility went back on city water Dec. 16, as the VA received water quality testing results Dec. 13.

The VA had been using water tankers before that.

“Before the storm, our Facilities Management Services disconnected the campus’s 200,000-gallon water tank from the city water system as a precautionary measure,” Ramos said. “After Hurricane Helene, the municipal water system suffered severe damage, preventing the medical center from using city water immediately. Since our water system remained uncontaminated, we continued the water tanker operation to provide a safe and reliable water supply to our customers.”

Ramos said the VA prioritizes “meeting all federal water standards” before it transitioned back to municipal water.

“After the city declared the water safe for consumption, we implemented our plan to return to the municipal system, which includes flushing and testing the water,” Ramos said, noting that the hospital had sent out samples for water quality testing. “As a healthcare facility, we must follow this deliberate approach to safeguard the well-being of all our patients, staff, and visitors.”

Question: In front of the Shell station in Swannanoa, at the corner of Patton Cove Road and U.S. 70, a guy has been standing out there all day waving a cowboy hat and giving drivers a thumbs up. Who is this guy? And why is he doing this?

My answer: Clearly, his horse broke down and he needs help.

Real answer: This would be Cowboy Dave, whose full name is Dave Graham. He hails from Newark, Ohio, and travels the country offering support and a friendly wave of his white cowboy hat after natural disasters and other traumatic events.

Graham, 65, told me he’s been at this for more than 20 years, and he just wants to offer people a pleasant distraction and a kind word, whether they’re a truck driver, a volunteer or just a hardworking person with a tough job who’s on their way home.

“They deserve to be honored, so show honor where honor’s due,” Graham said. “So everybody gets a look in the eyes, right? And I let them know that they’re flipping important, because they are. How important is that?”

As I talked with Cowboy Dave last Tuesday evening, he gave just about every motorist a friendly wave of his hat, a thumbs up and maybe some encouraging words. Many responded with horn honks and thumbs ups of their own.

Initially after the storm, he said motorists were a little frosty, maybe suspecting he was up to something or looking for money. He’s not — Graham and his wife actually operate a nonprofit, heartshurt.com, that offers support to those in need, and locally he’s been coordinating assistance for people hit by the storm, delivering fuel to campers and inviting people to share fellowship near his camper.

Now the reactions are much more positive.

“To get somebody to toot the horn or or do something other than wave, something audible — say, ‘Hello cowboy,’ or whatever — that was about one out of 60, and I count in all the directions,” Graham said. “Now it’s about one out of 20.”

As we were talking, Hunter Preston, the chaplain at Givens Highlands Farms in Black Mountain, stopped by to thank Cowboy Dave for praying with him that morning. The area has a real need for people who can work on donated trailers and campers to make sure they’re operational this winter, and Preston told Cowboy that after they prayed he got a solid lead on workers who can help.

“This is Christmas,” Preston said about what Cowboy Dave is doing. “Absolutely, this is Christmas.”

Preston said Graham’s work is not affiliated with a particular denomination or organization, and Graham’s not looking for glory.

“All the credit is going to the glory of God, because that’s the word of the Gospel. The Lord shows up for the most needy, the hurting, in the most broken places, for the woundedness,” Preston said. “And this is the kind of love that just continues to come into this area.”

He noted that Cowboy Dave plans to host folks under a nearby illuminated tree by the Shell station on Christmas Eve for a Bible reading.

Graham lit up like the tree at the mention of this.

“Christmas Eve day at noon, Cowboy will have the PA system out,” Graham said with a laugh. “People can pull in in their car, and it will be the Christmas story from Matthew and Luke.”

He’ll be doing that every two hours throughout the day, into 2 a.m. Christmas.

“And I’ve got 20 people committed to 2 a.m. Christmas morning who are gonna be here,” Graham said.

I might miss that one, Cowboy Dave, but Merry Christmas!

Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Got a question? Send it to John Boyle at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org or 828-337-0941. His Answer Man columns appear each Tuesday and Friday. The Watchdog’s reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

Related