While the City of Asheville has restored potable water to its 63,000 customers, it’s still struggling with high turbidity at its main reservoir, North Fork.
Filtering that cloudy water remains a challenge, but major assistance is on the way this week in the form of a $39 million six-month project spearheaded by the Army Corps of Engineers to install a mobile filtration system at the reservoir. The city and the Corps planned to start testing the system this week, and Asheville Water Resources spokesperson Clay Chandler said it should be operational by Friday.
Chandler addressed the plan at the Monday Tropical Storm Helene briefing and then answered followup questions via email. Plans call for the system, which will be run by a contractor, to run continuously at North Fork Reservoir, which is located outside of Black Mountain and provides water to 80 percent of the city’s residents.
“Its production will start small, around 5 million gallons per day, and ramp up from there,” Chandler said. “Eventually, the Corps of Engineers system will do most of the heavy lifting, with North Fork’s existing processes providing support, to produce the average daily demand of 20-25 million gallons of water.”
The city restored untreated water to most customers in mid-October and potable water Nov. 18. But turbidity remains a concern.
“While North Fork has been able to meet system demand on its own for several weeks, we’re still one snowstorm or other especially windy weather event from the turbidity becoming unmanageable for our existing treatment processes,” Chandler said. “The Corps of Engineers system will provide a critical layer of security that will keep our customers in water should that happen.”
Chandler said the Federal Emergency Management Agency will cover the cost of the project.
Army Corps of Engineers spokesperson Patrick Moes said the North Fork Reservoir Turbidity Reduction Project contract was awarded to Ahtna/CDM Smith on Nov. 8.
“With respect to the design of the project, we provided the holistic performance requirements such as a gallons per day requirement (25 million), pumping requirements, etc., and the contractor executed the plan,” Moes said via email.
“The $39.2 million contract is for six months, with options to extend the work beyond the initial performance effort. The extension options include two additional six-month intervals, but we have not had those discussions at this point.”
Ahtna and CDM Smith have worked together on other projects. Ahtna’s website states the corporation is “one of 13 Alaska Native Regional Corporations established by Congress under terms of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971.
“Based in Glennallen, Alaska, Ahtna, Inc. is owned by more than 2,000 shareholders, the majority of whom are of Ahtna Athabascan descent,” the site continues. “Many Ahtna shareholders still reside in the Ahtna region, the traditional homeland of the Ahtna people.”
Nearly a month after Tropical Storm Helene knocked out the City of Asheville’s water system, North Fork Reservoir remained a murky brown. The city restored untreated water to most customers in mid-October and potable water Nov. 18. But turbidity remains a concern. // Credit: City of Asheville
Ahtna’s subsidiaries provide a range of services across many industries, construction and government contracting, according to the website. It works in all 50 states.
CDM Smith is a privately owned engineering and construction company that offers service in “water, environment, transportation, energy and facilities,” according to its website. Its world headquarters is in Boston.
After Helene caused extreme flooding and heavy runoff into North Fork, on Sept. 27, essentially turning the 350-acre lake upside down, the measurement of turbidity, Nephelometric Turbidity Units (NTUs), stood at 79. The raw water coming into North Fork, which is surrounded by a largely undeveloped 20,000-acre watershed, usually has a measurement around 1. By Monday it had dropped to 12.7.
The city has taken several measures to reduce turbidity, including three rounds of in-lake chemical treatments to help sediment coagulate and sink, and the installation of “turbidity curtains” designed to help still the water and foster coagulation of clay particles.
With the Army Corps’ help in constructing a pilot plant at North Fork to see what level of turbidity the reservoir’s direct filtration system can handle, the city discovered it was able to filter and treat higher turbidity water than previously thought. Initially, the city said turbidity would have to drop to the 1.5-2.0 level before treatment began, but it realized via the pilot plant that it could treat water with NTU levels in the teens.
The three in-reservoir treatment applications at North Fork involved dispersing aluminum sulfate, a coagulant, and caustic soda, which regulates the water’s pH levels to ensure optimum coagulation and sinking of clay particles. The turbidity improved, but it has been slow going: It remained in the 20s through October before dropping into the teens in November.
The water coming to customers’ taps is potable now and has a very low turbidity level, about .1, the city said previously. That’s well under EPA requirements.
‘Seasonal flip” may help turbidity
On Monday, Chandler noted another phenomenon that could help with turbidity: “the seasonal flip.”
“So, when the water gets really cold, like it’s about to get because it’s really cold outside, it does exactly like the term ‘flip’ sounds. It takes everything that’s on or near the bottom and puts it near the top, and takes everything that’s at or near the top and puts it on the bottom,” Chandler said.
The city is fairly certain that a seasonal flip occurred at the Bee Tree Reservoir in the past few days.
“We believe that the reservoir at North Fork is going to do its seasonal flip sometime this week,” Chandler said Monday. “Bee Tree Reservoir did its seasonal flip, we are reasonably certain, last week, which drastically lowered the turbidity there — finally got it under 100 in the lower depths of the Bee Tree reservoir.”
It had stood near 500.
Bee Tree, located in Swannanoa, is much smaller than North Fork, but the seasonal flip results are encouraging for North Fork, Chandler said, because if the larger reservoir sees a similar shift, it could significantly lower turbidity.
The city announced it was awarding the contract to the Army Corps on Nov. 8. Chandler said the Corps is delivering the filtration system on time, “exactly fitting the timeline that they originally gave us.”
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. 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/.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Alan Wooten | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-04-03 14:11:00
(The Center Square) – Hurricane Helene’s death toll in North Carolina has grown to 107 and is 236 across seven states.
Gov. Josh Stein shared news of a death in the Avery County community of Newland. The wife of a couple camping was among those who died in earlier confirmations; the husband’s death was added on Thursday after his body was found.
The governor said the couple was camping on the last weekend of September when the storm hit.
This weekend marks the beginning of the 28th week of recovery. Damage is estimated at $60 billion.
Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in Dekle Beach, Fla., on Sept. 26. It was expected to come north to the Appalachian Mountains; however, the rainfall total from its dissipation there exceeded all forecasts.
Some places got more than 30 inches, most were at 24 or more. Due to terrain, water often rushed before it pooled and flooded – very unlike the flooding that happens in the coastal plains.
AccuWeather said rainfall totals were 32.51 inches in Jeter Mountain, 31.36 inches in Busick, and 26.65 inches in Hughes.
Forty-two died in Buncombe County, 11 in Yancey and 10 in Henderson.
Respective state officials say 49 were killed in South Carolina, 34 in Georgia, 25 in Florida, 18 in Tennessee, two in Virginia and one in Indiana.
Numbers were confirmed by The Center Square based on information supplied by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services; South Carolina Department of Public Safety; Georgia Emergency Management Agency; Florida Department of Law Enforcement; Tennessee Emergency Management Agency; Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin; and the Gibson County Sheriff’s Office in Indiana.
Helene is the fourth most deadly hurricane from the Atlantic Basin in the last three-quarters of a century. Only Katrina (2005, deaths 1,392), Audrey (1957, deaths 416) and Camille (1969, deaths 256) killed more people.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Alan Wooten | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-04-02 14:21:00
(The Center Square) – Minority benefit against the majority giving up “agency, creativity, decision-making and other vital skills” in what is described as a valley of an artificial intelligence journey is likely in the next few years, says one voice among hundreds in a report from Elon University.
John M. Stuart’s full-length essay, one of 200 such responses in “Being Human in 2035: How Are We Changing in the Age of AI?,” speaks to the potential problems foreseen as artificial intelligence continues to be incorporated into everyday life by many at varying levels from professional to personal to just plain curious. The report authored by Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie of Elon’s Imagining the Digital Future Center says “the fragile future of some foundational and unique traits” found only in humans is a concern for 6 in 10.
“I fear – the time being – that while there will be a growing minority benefitting ever more significantly with these tools, most people will continue to give up agency, creativity, decision-making and other vital skills to these still-primitive AIs and the tools will remain too centralized and locked down with interfaces that are simply out of our personal control as citizens,” writes Smart, a self-billed global futurist, foresight consultant, entrepreneur and CEO of Foresight University. “I fear we’re still walking into an adaptive valley in which things continue to get worse before they get better. Looking ahead past the next decade, I can imagine a world in which open-source personal AIs are trustworthy and human-centered.
“Many political reforms will reempower our middle class and greatly improve rights and autonomy for all humans, whether or not they are going through life with PAIs. I would bet the vast majority of us will consider ourselves joined at the hip to our digital twins once they become useful enough. I hope we have the courage, vision and discipline to get through this AI valley as quickly and humanely as we can.”
Among the ideas by 2035 from the essays, Paul Saffo offered, “The first multi-trillion-dollar corporation will employ no humans except legally required executives and board, have no offices, own no property and operate entirely through AI and automated systems.”
Saffo is a futurist and technology forecaster in the Silicon Valley of California, and a consulting professor at the School of Engineering at Stanford.
In another, Vint Cerf wrote, “We may find it hard to distinguish between artificial personalities and the real ones. That may result in a search for reliable proof of humanity so that we and bots can tell the difference.”
Cerf is generally known as one of the “fathers of the internet” alongside Robert Kahn and for the internet protocol suite, colloquially known as TCP/IP.
Working alongside the well-respected Elon University Poll, the survey asked, “What might be the magnitude of overall change in the next decade in people’s native operating systems and operations as we more broadly adapt to and use advanced AIs by 2035? From five choices, 61% said considerable (deep and meaningful change 38%) and dramatic (fundamental, revolutionary change 23%) and another 31% said moderate and noticeable, meaning clear and distinct.
Only 5% said minor change and 3% no noticeable change.
“This report is a revealing and provocative declaration to the profound depth of change people are undergoing – often without really noticing at all – as we adapt to deeper uses of advancing AI technology,” Anderson said. “Collectively, these experts are calling on humanity to think intentionally and carefully, taking wise actions now, so we do not sleepwalk into an AI future that we never intended and do not want.”
In another question, respondents answered whether artificial intelligence and related technologies are likely to change the essence of being human. Fifty percent said changes were equally better and worse, 23% said mostly for the worse, and 16% said mostly for the better.
The analysis predicted change mostly negative in nine areas: social and emotional intelligence; capacity and willingness to think deeply about complex concepts; trust in widely shared values and norms; confidence in their native abilities; empathy and application of moral judgment; mental well-being; sense of agency; sense of identity and purpose; and metacognition.
Mostly positive, the report says, are curiosity and capacity to learn; decision-making and problem-solving; and innovative thinking and creativity.
Anderson and Rainie and those working on the analysis did not use large language models for writing and editing, or in analysis of the quantitative data for the qualitative essays. Authors said there was brief experimentation and human realization “there were serious flaws and inaccuracies.” The report says 223 of 301 who responded did so “fully generated out of my own mind, with no LLM assistance.”
SUMMARY: On March 14, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to dramatically reduce funding for seven federal agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which awarded $266.7 million in 2024. The order aims to eliminate non-essential functions and cut agency personnel to legal minimums. The move sparked backlash from library and museum organizations, warning it would severely impact early literacy programs, internet access, job assistance, and community services. Critics urged Congress to intervene, while the administration framed the cuts as part of efforts to reduce government waste under the U.S. DOGE Service initiative led by Elon Musk.
