The North Fork Reservoir’s capacity for providing treated water to city customers continues to rise, but the water is still not potable and likely won’t be for weeks.
“North Fork’s capacity to push treated and filtered water into the system has risen to 17 million gallons a day,” Asheville Water Resources Department Clay Chandler said at the Buncombe County Helene briefing Wednesday. “That’s extremely significant. And that’s almost double what the capacity was when we first started pushing filtered water into the system last Wednesday.”
As the murkiness continues to improve, the city also has significantly dropped the amount of chlorine it’s using to treat the water.
The 350-acre reservoir, which provides drinking water to 80 percent of Asheville’s 63,000 customers, was hit hard by Tropical Storm Helene on Sept. 27, leaving it with extremely silt-laden water and without its three main distribution lines.
The city restored water service in mid-October, but only with heavily chlorinated lake water that is not potable. Chandler said workers have reduced chlorine levels from 8 parts per million initially to 2.5 this week.
The city has installed a “turbidity curtain” near the intakes to help still the reservoir, and it has conducted two treatment sessions with aluminum sulfate, a coagulant that helps clay particles sink, and caustic soda, which provides the optimum pH for that to work.
“We have ordered additional aluminum sulfate and caustic soda for next week’s treatment,” Chandler said. “We hope to get that underway Monday afternoon.”
Work continues on mobile filtration system
Additionally, Chandler said the city continues to work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to install a mobile filtration system that can handle more turbid water. Turbidity is measured in Nephelometric Turbidity Units (NTU), and ideally the city needs that level to hit 1.5 to 2.0 for optimum filtration with the city’s direct filtration system. On Tuesday, turbidity stood around 18, down from 18.5 Monday morning and a previous high of 30.
The contractor will treat the reservoir near Black Mountain every day next week, “or until the treatment chemicals run out, whichever happens first,” Chandler said. “But we expect that to be a minimum of four days staying at North Fork.”
Previously, the city said it could not filter water until the 1.5-2.0 NTU range was reached, but Chandler said Wednesday that workers have discovered, with the Army Corps of Engineers’ help, that the plant can handle more turbid water.
The system needs to reach 27 million gallons a day in production to fully pressurize the system and provide potable water. The Army Corps set up a small, portable pilot treatment system at North Fork “that has the same kind of filters on it that we have,” Chandler said.
“And we just started testing pushing water through it, seeing how the filters handled it, seeing how long we could run the filters before we had to take them offline and backwash them,” he continued. “And once we got comfortable with the results, and how that small amount translated to a large amount, that’s when we started pushing filtered water through the system. That was a week ago today.”
The city has conducted two treatment sessions with aluminum sulfate, a coagulant that helps clay particles sink, and caustic soda, which provides the optimum pH for that to work. A third treatment is set for next week. // Credit: City of Asheville
The city would still be “most comfortable” pushing the full amount of water through the system with turbidity at 1.5-2.0 NTU. In normal times, the reservoir’s water hovers around 1.0, but it was deluged with silt during Helene and the lake essentially turned upside down, Chandler has said previously.
The Army Corps continues to work to install a mobile filtration system at North Fork designed for high-turbidity water. Chandler said previously that it could be ready in late November or early December, and the Corps’ procurement process for that equipment is ongoing.
Chandler also noted that one of the city’s contractors, T&K Utilities, completed installation of new primary transmission main lines from the reservoir, a 24-inch pipe and a 36-inch pipe. The previous transmission lines, along with a 36-inch bypass line, all washed out in the storm.
Chandler said the two main lines do follow “the same general route” as before.
“The bypass location — same thing, same general area,” Chandler said. “But when this process is finished, it will be more heavily armored and buried deeper than it was previously.”
Eventually the city would like to work toward an additional bypass line that would be “geographically separate” from the current main lines and the bypass line, but the area around North Fork is mountainous and geographically challenging, Chandler said.
Once the city can filter the full 27 million gallons of water daily through North Fork, it will take two to three weeks to fully flush, refill and repressurize the system to deliver potable water, the city has said previously.
Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. John Boyle has been covering Asheville and surrounding communities since the 20th century. You can reach him at (828) 337-0941, or via email at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Alan Wooten | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-04-18 14:16:00
(The Center Square) – Planning and response to Hurricane Helene with early voting already underway has been deemed worthy of an award for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
Fifty-three programs from 258 nominations earned the Exemplary Contingency Planning and Emergency Response Efforts award from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Additionally, election boards in the counties of Buncombe, Currituck, Durham and Wake won 2024 Clearinghouse Awards, and those in Durham, Rockingham and Union counties earned honorable mention.
Helene killed 107 and caused an estimated $60 billion damage.
The storm made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in Dekle Beach, Fla., on Sept. 26. It dissipated over the mountains of the state and Tennessee, dropping more than 30 inches in some places and over 24 consistently across more.
Election Day was six weeks away. The disaster area declared included 25 counties and coordination with the state board; county boards; lawmen on the federal, state and local levels; the state National Guard; the U.S. Postal Service; and information technology professionals on multiple levels.
Voter turnout in the 25 counties was 74.9%, a tick higher than the state average of 72.6%.
“We are extremely proud of the efforts of our state’s election officials and our partners to pull off a successful election under the most trying of circumstances,” said Karen Brinson Bell, the state board’s executive director. “Hundreds of thousands of western North Carolinians were able to vote in the important 2024 election because of state board planning, along with the hard work and resiliency of county election officials and the invaluable assistance of our emergency management and law enforcement partners.”
The award is a different kind of light for the state board.
Between July 22 and Sept. 12, seven lawsuits were filed against the state board of Democrats Alan Hirsch, its chairman, Jeff Carmon and Siobhan Millen; and Republicans Stacy Eggers and Kevin Lewis; and Bell. More followed the election and are still unresolved along with the state Supreme Court race between Democrat Allison Riggs and Republican Jefferson Griffin.
SUMMARY: U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen met with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident mistakenly deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador. Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, traveled to El Salvador to check on Abrego Garcia, who has been held for over a month at the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT). The Trump administration acknowledged the deportation error. Despite challenges in securing a meeting, Van Hollen met Abrego Garcia and shared an update with his wife. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele mocked the meeting, commenting that Abrego Garcia would remain in custody.
SUMMARY: In Disney’s “Magic of Storytelling” podcast, Thumper discovers a robin’s egg after a storm. He and his four sisters—Trixie, Tessy, Daisy, and Ria—worry about the egg being cold and try to keep it warm with leaves. As they debate the best approach, they decide to find the mama robin for help. Meanwhile, Thumper and Daisy attempt to cheer the egg by singing and dancing. Eventually, the sisters return with a nest just as the mama robin arrives. The egg hatches, bringing joy to the bunnies as they celebrate their teamwork and caring efforts.
Thumper the bunny is hopping along one day and finds a special egg! Soon, he and his family are set out on an adventure to find the egg’s Mama.
