The state agency that oversees drinking water quality will soon ask the federal government for money to make water treatment plants in western North Carolina more resilient to natural disasters like Hurricane Helene.
During a visit last week to the North Fork Water Treatment Plant in Black Mountain, N.C., Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson toured the facility, which is being aided by turbidity reduction machines from the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
The project — which takes water from the Burnett Reservoir and treats it to remove dirt and other debris before sending it to the city’s plant for further treatment — is unique in scale and volume, Army Corps of Engineers Col. Brad Morgan said.
He called the project a first-of-its-kind, “given the scope and the scale and just the amount of turbidity that we needed to reduce, as well as the quantity of water that we needed to produce through our system.”
The storm churned up the turbidity, or cloudiness caused by sediment, at the North Fork Reservoir. Turbidity is measured in nephelometric turbidity units (NTU). In typical circumstances, water resources officials look for turbidity of less than 2 ntu. The storm left the reservoir with levels above 90 NTU.
That system is run by a team of about 11 engineers, managed by the Army Corps. By acting as a first line of defense against dirt and other debris, it takes some pressure off the city’s water treatment facility, which was overwhelmed during and immediately after Hurricane Helene.
The Corps will likely move on in a few months, Morgan said, leaving the state and city responsible for the future of the water system.
The Corps are currently fulfilling a six-month $39.2 million contract that covered construction and operational costs. The agency’s future involvement “depends on decisions that the city leadership has to make, the county leadership, the state leadership, and of course, what potential federal program could come in and take over these systems,” Morgan said.
The turbidity reduction systems that his teams have built will likely be used as the longer-term resilience projects are constructed and installed.
Federal Funding Available
Wilson, who leads the state agency responsible for water quality, said last week that he will be asking the federal government — specifically the Environmental Protection Agency — for money to make the rural water systems in western North Carolina more resilient against natural disasters.
“There is federal funding available,” he said. “We've been trying to work with those communities to help them secure that federal funding from EPA so that they can make permanent upgrades that will make those systems more resilient in the future.”
After Hurricane Helene, most of Asheville went without running water for weeks because of the damage to the North Fork plant. In other parts of the region — like Marshall and Spruce Pine — water systems are also being aided by the Corps and hope to receive federal money for repairs.
