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Twice in two decades, enormous transmission lines have washed out at North Fork Reservoir after torrential, hurricane-induced rain events, leaving city residents without water for days on end.
In September 2004, a historic rain event spawned by a hurricane pummeled the Black Mountain and Swannanoa areas, causing a catastrophic failure of the City of Asheville’s nearby North Fork Reservoir. Two large transmission pipes washed out, leaving Asheville without water for a week, inconveniencing residents and costing businesses millions of dollars.
Determined to prevent a similar outage at Asheville’s main water source, city officials got serious about bolstering North Fork’s resiliency. In addition to replacing the two main transmission lines, 24 and 36 inches in diameter, the city added an auxiliary 36-inch transmission pipe in a different location from the main lines.
Contractors buried the line about 25 feet deep.
“It was armored against a high water volume event or some sort of destructive event that happened on the ground surface,” Water Resources spokesperson Clay Chandler said in an interview at City Hall on Oct. 3.
“This redundancy was engineered and installed to withstand a 2004 event, without a doubt,” added Assistant City Manager Ben Woody.
But the line was no match for Helene’s record 31 inches of rain. The bypass line washed out Sept. 27, along with the two main transmission lines.
The city is already rebuilding the bypass line – a key step because it’s the city’s “easiest path to restore water,” Woody said, but full restoration of water for Asheville could take weeks, and he and other city officials have studiously avoided providing a specific restoration timeline.
This is due in part because they were burned after the holiday water outage of 2022-2023 by repeatedly saying water would come back on within a set time frame. That outage dragged on for 11 days in some areas.
First off, Chandler said any timeline would likely be inaccurate.
“Number two, it would be unfair to our customers to predict with any sort of confidence,” Chandler said. “We do know that full service restoration will be measured in weeks, not days.”
Distribution lines will have to be assessed and repaired where needed, the system’s tanks and lines pressurized, and the water tested for safety before the system is fully restored, he said.
At the regular post-Helene news briefing Friday afternoon, Woody showed photos and video of the remains of the bypass line, sitting exposed and broken off in a 25-foot deep ravine Helene carved on the hillside outside of North Fork. Chandler referred to it as “a new river.”
It was once a placid mountain stream you’d associate more with trout fishing than Biblical flooding.
The water system was designed to be able to operate solely on the backup line, if it had stayed intact.
“And we will further engineer and armor that for the next one,” Woody said.
The reason for choosing to replace the auxiliary line first is pretty simple.
“There’s a little more left of it than there was the main transmission line, so based on that and just the geographical location, it’s going to be quicker to connect there than it would be at the main transmission line,” Chandler said, noting a few hundred feet of the line washed out compared to possibly thousands of feet of the other lines. “So that’s 100 percent of our focus right now.”
This time, workers will install an elbow in the line to allow it to be buried a few feet deeper, Woody said at the briefing.
The backup line by itself can allow the reservoir to distribute water to Asheville. That would be a key development in restoring service to all customers, as North Fork provides 80 percent of Asheville’s water.
While Woody showed pictures of significant progress in the restoration, as well as restoration of a distribution line along old U.S. 70 in Swannanoa, the city is still saying full restoration could take weeks.
The transmission lines exit the treatment facility at North Fork and head downhill, following a small road. Chandler said it’s not feasible to locate the large transmission lines elsewhere because they need to follow roadways for accessibility and maintenance.
Most of the Asheville area relies on the city’s water system, which serves 63,000 residential, commercial and contract customers, about 155,000 people in all. The towns of Black Mountain and Biltmore Forest get all their water from Asheville, Woodfin 25 percent.
The city created its first water impoundment, the Bee Tree Reservoir, in 1927, and it served as Asheville’s primary water source until North Fork Reservoir near Black Mountain opened in 1955. North Fork remains the system’s workhorse, but Asheville still draws water from Bee Tree, as well as the Mills River water plant in northern Henderson County, built in 1998, which draws from the French Broad River.
The system cannot operate off of Mills River and Bee Tree by themselves, and Bee Tree sustained serious damage and is out of commission.
Chandler noted that even if the city could continuously run the Mills River and Bee Tree plants wide open, that would not be enough to deliver water to all customers, even at a reduced flow.
North Fork’s maximum production capacity is 31 million gallons per day, Bee Tree 5 million gallons a day, and Mills River 7 million gallons per day. Daily demand averages 21.5 million gallons.
At maximum capacity, Mills River can serve about 20 percent of Asheville’s system, all in the south. It has been running at reduced capacity, as its entire intake structure was underwater during the storm.
On Friday, Woody offered good news about Mills River, noting it was fully operational again after working at reduced capacity.
“But I want to also give the caveat that the best that Mills River can do is provide water to about 20 percent of our water system,” Woody said. “So we’ve got about 20 percent of the water system in water.”
Woody said right now the harder repair is going to be the Bee Tree Reservoir, as that road was devastated and water lines destroyed. After the storm, workers had to walk a mile and a half to get to the reservoir, he said.
On Friday, NCDOT spokesperson David Uchiyama said department workers had completed the repair on Bee Tree Road on Tuesday.
After two very similar wipeouts at the same facility, Woody and Chandler know some customers may wonder if it’s time to look at a more stable setup, possibly at another location.
North Fork has a pristine 22,000-acre watershed, so duplicating that in today’s world would likely be impossible, but the city is considering options for an additional facility.
“We know we need another plant in the future, and we want to locate that somewhere else, because that does help,” Woody said. “(Before the storm) we were beginning to think about, ‘What’s the next expansion of the water system look like? And we will do that in a way that increases our resiliency?’ So yes, we’re gonna have to put it somewhere else.”
North Fork and Bee Tree are both east of Asheville, and Mills River lies to the southwest.
Locating any kind of new facility likely would take years, as it would require land acquisition and access to a water source. It would also require approval of City Council.
The French Broad, which starts in Transylvania County and runs north through Henderson, Buncombe, and Madison counties on into Tennessee, could be a potential source, although it has issues with turbidity and E. coli contamination. Chandler said the water department “would explore every water source for a new facility.”
Marc Hunt, a river advocate and former Asheville City Council member, said he understands how residents might see two prolonged outages at North Fork in 20 years as a good reason to explore options. But he thinks the city should stick with its workhorse, as North Fork provides some of the cleanest water in the Southeast and a “huge flow that satisfies most of our needs.”
“It’s just outstanding as a resource,” Hunt said. “If the question is can we do something less vulnerable elsewhere, we’re going to trade off water quality, and I would argue, water quantity, for resilience. Intuitively, I don’t think abandoning North Fork is worth it.”
The city has invested enormously in North Fork, including a five-year, $38.5 million dam improvement project completed in 2021. Siting another location — for a reservoir or even a water treatment plant — would include a host of problems, Hunt said, primarily finding suitable land and relatively pure water.
Former Asheville Mayor Charles Worley, who was in office from 2001 through 2005 and served on council before that, vividly remembers the 2004 outage and the addition of the “armored” bypass line.
“It does boggle my mind,” Worley said, referring to the washout of the deeply buried bypass line. “I guess what has struck me is that this storm that we just experienced has to be, if not the worst, one of the worst in history.”
As Asheville Watchdog reported this week, Tropical Storm Helene has eclipsed the 1916 flood in rainfall and storm flow.
After the 2004 storm, Worley said discussions took place about possible other locations for a water source or water plant, and he wouldn’t be surprised if they resurface again. But he thinks the city is married to North Forth, for better or worse.
“The biggest problem that I was aware of back then, and it’s probably the same thing right now, is, ‘Where would you find another source that you could develop to be able to supply the needs of Asheville?’” Worley said. “I’m just not aware of anything that would fit that bill.”
Asked for comment, current Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer issued a statement via text, noting “an uncontrollable act of god” caused the devastation and left the community in crisis.
“Our priority is to restore vital infrastructure like a functioning water system as quickly as possible,” Manheimer said. “We are fortunate to have teams of local, state and federal engineers working on our system. That knowledge will provide us the opportunity to learn vital information as to how to protect, or indeed improve, our system going forward.”
Chandler said the city is working with several local contractors, as well as water personnel from the city’s 160-person team, 200 Public Works employees, and water personnel from other cities, including Greensboro, Charlotte, Raleigh, and Cape Fear.
Woody did not have an estimate for the cost of the North Fork and Bee Tree repairs, but he said the city hopes the Federal Emergency Management Agency will pick up most or all of the tab.
“We are doing anything necessary to repair this system,” Woody said in the interview at City Hall. “From day one, we just went to contract — we didn’t wait. I don’t know what it’s going to cost. My message to the water department was, ‘Anything you want, you do. I don’t care.’”
FEMA officials have been in town, Woody said, and the city has access to their expertise, but the city is heading up the North Fork repair, rebuilding the access road and the water lines.
“What they really do for us is they are going to help us monitor, record, track and contract properly, so that we can get reimbursed,” Woody said. “So our intention is to get reimbursed for everything we do right down the line.”
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/.
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I REALLY appreciate this update! It provides background and some assurance that there IS a plan. I’m sure city officials don’t want to get burned by making predictions and promises with a definite timeline, but hearing “it’s going to be weeks” makes it difficult to make a personal plan as an Asheville refugee. Thank you, Watchdog, and to all the people working hard to restore services.
Once water is restored, do we know how long the boil advisory will remain in place?
Thanks for this kind of reporting, it’s really helpful knowing that water might be available before WAY too long (even if it’s via the backup pipe).
Asheville has a limited water supply, yet certain city leaders like Esther and Sage have rubberstamped irresponsible building permits, especially in flood zones, that have over taxed the water system. There needs to be regulation on the number of new tappins and stop treating our water resource like it is unlimited. Asheville will run out of water again if your responsible overflowed is not kept in check.
Irresponsible development is a major concern here. A car-centric mountain village proposal still looms over Richmond Hill-a community on a dead end street that was blocked for days (again) and isn’t likely to have water anytime soon. So, what happens when you add 4000 woodfin residents to an Asheville neighborhood of 400 where there’s on street parking, no sidewalks, trapped National guard, no fire evacuation route? And fire safety should be on everyone’s radar right now with people cooking outside and debris all around. Only one city council member stood up publicly and said this is a bad idea…Esther and Sage have stood by in silence.
Thinking outside the box. An emergency response water line could consist of sections stored on a flatbed truck or many. They would consist of Fire fighting type water hoses coupled together at any length needed, including miles. Could be routed anywhere along the repair stretch out of the way of repairs, deployed in a few days and able to send water to the pumping stations, etc….I know a company could manufacture these to hold watever pressure was necessary…
I do not want to criticize your assessment lwrncweissman. however, if it was that simple, as you seem to imply, wouldn’t they have done that already?
This is a great summary of the briefing. The additional reporting came up with answers to questions I hadn’t thought of yet. Thank you!
Thank you John for your thorough, and thoughtful reporting. Your calm during these crazy, difficult, times is greatly appreciated. Thanks to everyone at Asheville Watchdog for their efforts to keep us all informed.
The City is accountable to its citizens. This emergency makes our city unliveable.
However challenging it might be, the City owes us a specific estimated time for restoring water service. Hire a Project Manager if necessary to calculate estimated time to restoration, monitor progress, and revise the completion estimate as often as necessary.
The City should provide citizens with daily work progress reports.
“Accuracy” is not the point. Accountability is what’s important. That means the City makes best efforts to keep the public informed on progress, setbacks, and revisions to plan.
PS When thousands of citizens tune in to the radio for a briefing, do not rely on slides and videos to communicate. Speak directly to the people.
Exactly. They are in CYA mode. And so focused on the repair that they can’t seem to also focus on the medium-term aspects of getting Porto’s and daily water delivery into neighborhoods.
We basically have a lack of faith in them because they haven’t attempted to solve this project. Personally, if it’s going to take 12 weeks or even six weeks, I say you divert resources for half a week and solve this problems so that we can all go forward more comfortably for the next 6 to 12 weeks or whatever it is. They are pushing off tending to the citizen’s health and comfort why? So they can get further down the line on this project that’s gonna take weeks
A good project plan would either limit scope (first put resources towards get everyone set with a routine for drinking and flush water, which should take under a week), THeN begin the longer project. OR they can bring in more resources (offload the task of setting up Porto’s, sourcing 5gallon buckets for every household , and starting a daily water delivery delivery route just like the mail to a team from a nearly Carolina city who wants to help)
They MUST solve everyday water problems long before that six week mark. So why not just do it now so we can be comfortable and healthier. Their “happy path” doesn’t seem to include sanitation.
I also think they are way overthinking this timeline thing. I understand it’s a challenging project to estimate with lots of unknowns. Why not give us the “bare minimum” so people can decide how to proceed. eg “minimum of 6 weeks (but probably twice as long and possibly 3 times as long)”
Thank you for the clear explanation of what’s going on with the water, but I’d to hear when they think most of North Fork users will have water. While it may be quite sometime before everyone’s service is restored, the majority may get their water back quite a bit sooner. I’d like to hear about that.
By far the best information on the Asheville water crisis that I have seen. Thanks so much!
great article, thanks all — interviewers/journalists and intervieees/quoted experts.
just want to post this here as well: i love city of asheville water + msd, have all the confidence in the world in them + their decision making + hard work. behind ya’ll 100% & as always, thank ya’ll so much. stay safe + well!
Thanks for this detailed and timely update
Good reporting, John. Thank you for digging in on this complicated topic and making it so understandable.
Immediately the city and county managers should have contacted experts in California, New Orleans, Italy, Austria, Germany and Japan. These places have experience in natural disasters and in getting water from mountains to suburban and urban areas. The thumb twiddling will lead to dysentery and cholera shortly.
That’s right Kevin because us locals are dumb as rocks and don’t understand the mountainous terrain at all!
I guess you think the armored bypass line installed in 2004 was sketched out on the back of a Bojangles napkin. I often wonder how we made it so long before hotshots like you got here.
Please reread John’s thorough and amazing detailed article. Note that there is no “thumb Twiddering” happening—our own crews as well as crews from the other utilities and private contractors are working as fast as possible to restore the destruction and they got started on it as soon as humanly possible.
Ron, what he’s saying makes sense to me. Clearly they need help because 10 days in, we still don’t have a system set up for bringing drinking water, much less flush water, to neighborhoods.
Not everyone can drive to go get gallons of water needed to flush their toilets. Not everyone has a car. Not everyone has – or can even lift – a gallon jug (8# per gallon).
Why are all the cubes on the corners in my neighborhood sourced and refilled by individuals?
Why haven’t they dropped Portos every few blocks? That alone would alleviate a tremendous amount of the water we need. Neighbors are already taken care of those who cannot carry their own water and flushed their own toilets. It would be nice to only have to focus on them instead of our families as well.
Point is, apparently the City does need help getting water from the mountains into the urban area. which is exactly what people here are doing – going to the mountain and getting water. It’s We, The People, making it happen though – not the city. That’s inexcusable this far into it.
He is right about the building public health crisis. Many people are unable to flush, wash their hands, sanitize their dishes. They are feeding their families in homes with not enough water to stay clean. It takes 2 gallons to flush the toilet when it’s been used a few times. That’s a lot of water to haul for each person on top of drinking. And dish water.
This is a terrible organizational failure. If they couldn’t work on this AND the waterline repair at the same time, they should’ve outsourced it to a team from another city that wants to help.
Sorry the complete destruction of the infrastructure is taking to long to repair, Audrey. How inconvenient for you this must be. We all need to understand that this was unprecedented. No one could fix this situation quickly. Not even God himself. My neighbors and I have been hauling water from creeks to our homes for flushing purposes for 10 days now,and not one of them has complained that this is the cities fault. You need to put on your big girl pants and stop complaining, at least you are alive and have a toilet to flush. Some have lost everything, including homes and fami!y members.
You seem to think that governments have a magic wand that they only use to open their secret warehouses when disasters hit them. 10,000 porta-johns on standby. Miles of vandalproof water hoses that can be deployed along non-existent roads. Conscripted labor that can be rolled in on bullet trains. Solar panels for every rooftop. Look around and you will see people working hard on the problems while you whine.
Well said Ron. I also believe Kevin should spare us his lectures on how us “local Yokels” don’t know how to move water around mountainous terrain.
Hello John I live in a elderly community of manufactured homes in East Asheville off Lower Grassy Branch Rd and Old Farm School Rd 28805. Dogwood Knoll. Do you know if this area is serviced by Northfork Reservoir or Bee Tree Reservoir?
Underground Water Pipe Weeks on end , so does this mean that main restaurant’s can’t open until the water is restored??? Keep me posted on that aspect.