NCDEQ, Asheville to seek funding for water treatment resilience as turbidity filter remains

BLACK MOUNTAIN — The whirr of machinery is practically inescapable atop a western hill overlooking the North Fork Water Treatment Plant as a sprawling temporary turbidity reduction system congeals, filters and removes solid particles from the 5.8 billion-gallon Burnett Reservoir.

More than eight months after the Tropical Storm Helene the quality and turbidity of water in the reservoir that feeds the North Fork plant is back to pre-storm levels, city of Asheville, state and federal officials said. The reservoir is now a blueish haze after the storm turned it mucky and green in September.

But given the delicate condition of North Fork’s environment, state and local officials are now looking to find long-term solutions to maintain the water plant that serves approximately 80% of the 160,000 customers in Asheville’s water system. The current system partially relies on a temporary turbidity reduction system brought online by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The system could outlast the Corps presence at the North Fork.

The temporary system was built under a $39.2 million contract that would run for six-months and covered capital costs and operations, the Citizen Times reported in December. The system said to serve as an added layer of protection to the facility’s filtration system that was strained during Helene and left the city without potable water for a month. The contract came with an option for two additional six-month contracts.

Army Corps of Engineers Col. Brad Morgan said the Corps will be maintaining the turbidity reduction system on the site for the next few months, but the Corps will likely leave within a year, leaving it up to state and local lawmakers to find a long-term solution.

“It’s been a unique project for the Corps. First of its kind for us, 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,” Morgan said. The Corps presence at the facility depends on decisions made by state and local leadership over “what potential federal program could come in and take over these systems,” he said.

While the Corps may only be present on the site for a few more months, the temporary filtration system could be in place for “much longer as the longer-term resilience [project] gets constructed and installed,” Morgan said.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality will be submitting an application to the Environmental Protection Agency to fund projects related to repairs and resilience at the North Fork and other water facilities damaged by Helene, said Secretary of the N.C. DEQ Reid Wilson during a May 30 visit to the North Fork facility. Wilson was joined on the tour by multiple local leaders and elected officials.

The temporary turbidity filtration system is run by a team that can range from seven to 11 people at a time on the site, Army Corps of Engineers civil engineer AJ Moore said during Wilson’s tour. Contractors pump turbid water from the reservoir into a set of vats that chemically treat the water, causing it to form larger removable chunks known as “floc.” Depending on the weight of the floc, chunks of brownish settled matter are either scooped off the top of the treated water by skimmers or flushed down a hopper to be processed and disposed.

After it’s treated at the turbidity filtration site, the water is sent back to the reservoir where it is again treated at the North Fork facility. Due to the reservoir water quality being high currently, operators are using “minimal” chemicals during the treatment processes, Moore said.

An application for funding the facility would likely coincide with funding for other water systems that suffered significant damages during the storm, including wastewater treatment facilities in Marshall and Spruce Pine. The goal, which has been echoed by city and county staff, is resilience, Reid said.

“We’ve been working with the county and the city of Asheville and with our partners at EPA, because there may be federal funding available to help make this system more resilient in the future,” Reid said.

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Will Hofmann is the Growth and Development Reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Got a tip? Email him at WHofmann@citizentimes.com or message will_hofmann.01 on Signal. Consider supporting this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.