The City of Asheville has restored non-potable, heavily chlorinated water to about 95 percent of users, but its main source of water, North Fork Reservoir, remains stubbornly murky 26 days after Tropical Storm Helene.
At the Buncombe County daily storm briefing Monday, Asheville Water Resources Department spokesperson Clay Chandler shared a photo of a still very brown-looking North Fork Reservoir. The city treated the reservoir Wednesday and Thursday with minerals that were supposed to cause clay particles to sink, clearing the water near the surface.
That did not happen.
“And as you can see, the surface water has not cleared up very much at all, if any,” Chandler said. “What has happened — and which is almost completely opposite of what we expected to happen — is water at the deeper portions — 40 to 50 feet — have shown fairly significant improvement as far as clearing turbidity.”
Chandler said windy conditions on the two days of treatment last week roiled the surface waters, stirring up sediment. But water officials are not entirely sure why the lake remains so stubbornly brown, as it’s normally a “pristine” water source, and its feeder streams have cleared back up.
“There have been a lot of things that have happened in the last three and a half weeks that have defied logic,” Chandler said. “This is just the latest one. And again, we think that the windy conditions Wednesday and Thursday of last week, when that treatment was done, stirred up that surface water to the point that it was not going to clear up, treatment or not.”
Turbidity is measured in Nephelometric Turbidity Units, or NTUs, and the EPA requires filter water to be less than .30 NTU for consumption. At North Fork, normal filtered water is between .03 and .05 NTU, meaning it’s “typically exponentially cleaner than required,” Chandler said previously.
The raw water typically entering the lake has an NTU of 1 or less, but Monday turbidity readings at North Fork were hovering between 25 and 27, Chandler said. On Oct. 11, the water registered 30 NTU.
The city water system still has a system-wide boil water notice in place. The water is safe for showers, laundry and flushing commodes, but it is not safe to consume unless boiled, and even then, the city still recommends using bottled water for consumption.
Chandler said Monday that he still had no timeline on full restoration of water, “or at least an accurate one that we can provide as far as when that lake will clear up and we can treat the water and push it through our filters and all of that.”
Over the weekend, the city reached 95 percent of system restoration with non-potable water. People in the Eastmoor and Bee Tree areas in east Asheville got water back, but some areas, including including Town Mountain and Webb Cove, remain without it. / Credit: City of Asheville
“But we are certainly hopeful that the second round of treatment will sort of push the ball down the court as far as that reservoir clearing up,” Chandler said.
The city treated the water with a mix of aluminum sulfate and caustic soda. Workers have used a boat to dump tote bags full of chemicals into the reservoir in an effort to purify the water.
Aluminum sulfate is a “salt-ish” mineral the department uses to regularly treat the reservoir, as it makes clay particles coagulate and sink, leading to clearer water for filtering and treatment. Caustic soda helps with optimum pH levels for the coagulation to work best.
The city is awaiting arrival Thursday or Friday of a “curtain” system that can be installed at the reservoir to help with turbidity. The city will have to install and anchor the curtains in place.
Once in, they’ll create a 500-foot circle around the intake.
“And we are pretty confident that by a week from today, we will be doing a second round of that in-lake treatment process,” Chandler said.
The reservoir has intakes for water treatment at 21, 50 and 80 feet. North Fork serves 80 percent of Asheville’s 63,000 water customers.
Asked if the city has considered bringing in or installing heavier-duty filtration equipment designed for turbid water, Chandler said the technology does exist, but there are challenges.
“The problem that we’re going to run into at North Fork is that North Fork, on average, pushes 25 million gallons a day into our system, and mobile or portable treatment facilities are just unable to handle that volume,” he said.
Chandler said that over the weekend, the city reached 95 percent of system restoration with non-potable water. People in the Eastmoor and Bee Tree areas in east Asheville got water back.
But some areas remain without any water, including Town Mountain and Webb Cove Road, that “have proven to be particularly problematic,” Chandler said, noting that includes 65 to 70 homes.
“A three-inch line that serves that area got washed out by a landslide after the storm, and so we’ve had to do a little bit of coordinating with NCDOT as far as road repair before we can restore service there,” Chandler said. “Our contractors are going to work on a temporary solution that we hope will be in place Wednesday or Thursday. That should restore service to most of the Town Mountain, Webb Cove areas that currently do not have water.”
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 – ) 2025-04-01 13:32:00
(The Center Square) – Directions on curriculum measured age appropriate and access in public libraries to materials considered harmful to minors are in a proposal at the North Carolina House of Representatives.
Parental Rights for Curriculum and Books, also known as House Bill 595, adds to state law a section for age-appropriate instruction for students; a human growth and development program for fourth and fifth graders; and says reproductive health and safety education shall not happen before seventh grade.
Rep. John A. Torbett, R-Gaston
NCLeg.gov
The bill authored by Rep. John Torbett, R-Gaston, and filed Monday additionally has sections on instructional materials and clarification of “defenses for material harmful to minors.” Public library access for minors is in a fourth section.
Gender identity instruction, a buzzword of recent election cycles, is prohibited prior to students entering the fifth grade. The proposal extends that to prior to the entering seventh grade.
The bill would require parental consent to learn about some elements associated with sex education – infections, contraception, assault and human trafficking.
State law allows schools the option to adopt local policies on parental consent for the reproductive health education.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Alan Wooten | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-03-31 16:37:00
(The Center Square) – Judicial warfare is eroding the confidence in Americans’ justice system leaving a blight on justice itself, says a North Carolina congresswoman who leads the Rules Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C, is speaking out against judges blocking the president’s decisions as granted in the Constitution ahead of a Tuesday congressional hearing.
“As of late, we have certainly seen a slew of rulings by rogue judges that surpass their own constitutional authority,” she said in a post to social media Monday afternoon. “This is judicial warfare in the flesh. If it is not remedied in a commonsense and expeditious fashion, these exercises in partisanship will do further irreparable damage to the nation and to the confidence of Americans in our justice system.”
More than a dozen orders from President Donald Trump – more than in the entire time Joe Biden, Barack Obama and George W. Bush served as presidents – have been thwarted or attempted to be blocked. Among the judges in the spotlight is U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, a pivotal figure in deportation of people accused of being in gangs in addition to just being named to preside in a case involving military operations and a messaging app.
Boasberg, appointed by Bush to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in 2002, was nominated to the federal bench by Obama and confirmed in the Senate 96-0 in 2012.
Boasberg on Wednesday issued and on Friday extended a temporary restraining order that prevents Trump from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport people believed to be part of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. A hearing, Judicial Overreach and Constitutional Limits on the Federal Courts, is at 10 a.m. Tuesday to be conducted jointly by the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence and the Internet, and the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government from within the Judiciar Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.
California Republican Darrell Issa is chairman of the former committee, Texas’ Chip Roy the latter. North Carolina Democrat Deborah Ross is a minority member of the former; North Carolina Republican Mark Harris is a majority member of the latter.
Witnesses scheduled include former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Cindy Romero, a victim of criminal activity believed perpetrated by Tren de Aragua in Aurora, Colo. Also on the invite list are witnesses from the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation.
Other federal judges drawing fire from supporters of the president include Biden appointees Amir Ali, Loren AliKhan, Deborah Boardman, Angel Kelley and Brendan Hurson; Obama appointees Paul Engelmayer, Amy Berman Jackson, John McConnell and Leo Sorokin; Bush appointee Joseph Laplante; Bill Clinton appointee William Alsup; and Ronald Reagan appointees John Coughenhour and Royce Lamberth.
“Without question,” Foxx said, “exceeding constitutional mandates as a matter of judicial philosophy does nothing more than blight justice itself.”
www.thecentersquare.com – By Alan Wooten | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-03-31 15:21:00
(The Center Square) – Wildfires continued to burn Monday in the Carolinas, though a sign of optimism arose with a burning ban lifted in 41 South Carolina counties and measured rainfall in both states.
Largest of the fires is Table Rock in Pickens and Greenville counties of South Carolina. The Black Cove fire is burning in North Carolina’s Polk and Henderson counties, the Rattlesnake fire is burning Haywood County, and the Alarka 5 fire is in Swain County.
South Carolina’s Horry County at the Atlantic Ocean and North Carolina border, and the northwestern counties of Spartanburg, Greenville, Pickens and Oconee remain under a burning ban. In North Carolina, all 100 counties have a ban in effect.
The Table Rock fire size is about 13,191 acres in South Carolina and 574 in North Carolina, the Forestry Commission of the former said. Containment is about 30%.
The Persimmon Ridge fire is 2,078 acres in size with 64% containment. Rain Sunday into Monday measured nearly 1 inch.
The Covington Drive Fire in Myrtle Beach is about 85% contained and in mop-up and strengthened firebreaks stage.
In North Carolina, the Black Cove complex of fires are 7,672 acres in size. It includes the Black Cove (3,502 acres, 36% contained), Deep Woods (3,971 acres, 32% contained) and Fish Hook (199 acres, 100% contained) fires. Rainfall overnight into Monday helped the battle.
