ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — If you’re an Asheville Water Resources Department customer, you know the problems the system has faced in recent years — the most recent being when Tropical Storm Helene decimated the transmission lines at North Fork Reservoir.
Months later, city officials said tests continue to show the system is safe.
The devastation
The storm, which swamped the state on Sept. 27, 2024, unleashed record flooding and killed at least 104 people across the state, including 43 in Buncombe County, state officials said.
Flooding destroyed the main lines at the city’s North Fork Reservoir. But a 36-inch backup pipe was partially salvageable. It took crews weeks to reconnect the backup line and get water flowing again.
But the water in the reservoir wasn’t crystal clear anymore. Sediment made the usual pristine water undrinkable. To be safe for the normal water treatment process, turbidity needs to fall somewhere between 1.5-2 nephelometric turbidity units — the measurement used to quantify the clarity of a fluid.
After the storm, the turbidity at North Fork was in the 20s and 30s — nowhere close to where it needed to be.
Crews treated the water with aluminum sulfate, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built mobile filtration systems all along the reservoir’s dam and turbidity curtains were installed.
In November, after about 53 days without clean water, Asheville lifted its boil water advisories.
Asheville Water Department Public Information Officer Clay Chandler said the curtains are still in place, although there are no plans to do another round of in-reservoir treatment.
“The treatment plant is operating as it should. At 8 a.m. (Thursday), raw water turbidity was 6.97. It continues to fall gradually. It’s important to note that the turbidity of water that has passed through our treatment systems is between 0.08 and 0.1, and has been since we began pushing treated water out of North Fork on Oct. 30. Those are normal, pre-Helene levels,” he said.
All water lines that were washed away by Helene have been replaced, and North Fork resumed using primary transmission lines since they were completed a couple months ago, Chandler said.
Testing the water
Amid concerns about lead and other contaminants in the system, the city expanded its water testing efforts and offered free tests to customers who wanted to check the water in their homes.
Those test results confirm safety measures are working, city officials said Thursday.
Out of 1,175 customer samples collected so far, only 24 showed detectable levels of lead on the first draw – with just nine samples exceeding the action limit of 0.015 parts per billion. For flush samples, five showed detectable levels of lead, but only two exceeded the action level. These two cases have been addressed with remediation, and resampling is underway.
First draw means water was collected straight from the faucet after sitting dormant for at least six hours.
Flush means water was collected after running the water at the faucet for 30 seconds.
City officials said the results indicate a consistent pattern: detectable lead levels are found in water systems that have been sitting dormant for an extended period. But, Asheville remains well within EPA and NCDEQ guidelines, which require at least 90 percent of first-draw samples to be below the action limit. This reinforces that flushing water systems is an effective way to reduce the risk of lead exposure.
“In December 2024, we received results from 51 sites in our lead and copper sampling pool. Of those, three had detectable lead levels on the first draw, and one exceeded the action level. These findings align with earlier results from July 2024, where three out of 54 sites had detectable lead, and one exceeded the action limit,” city officials said in a statement.
Test kits remain available for pick-up and drop-off at Asheville City Hall and three local libraries. City Hall is open 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday, while the North Asheville, East Asheville, and West Asheville libraries are open 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. The last day to pick up a test kit at library locations is Tuesday, Jan. 28, and the final day to drop off kits is Friday, Jan. 31. After that, the city’s capacity to process kits will decrease as operations return to normal.