This coverage is made possible through a partnership between BPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.
Margie Huggins grew up on a piece of land next to the Little River. Her parents farmed the land throughout her childhood and adolescence.
Huggins moved away and pursued a career as an attorney, but after she retired, she returned to the tranquil plot and decided to rewild it.
A few weeks ago, though, her tranquility was disturbed by the roar of a debris removal crew.
“They brought in their big heavy equipment and started coming up Little River to remove debris from Helene,” she said.
Though the waterway is public, Huggins wished she would have known it was going to happen so she could work with a local conservation group to save animals and express her wishes for the riverbank before the work began. Huggins worried that it could impact the health of the landscape and ecology she cared about so deeply, and that removing debris could hurt animals and lead to flooding.
“I think a big part of this is even just contacting the landowners and letting them know that the work is being done, that there's large machinery going to be moving mere feet from their property line,” Huggins said.
She had worked with Hans Lohmeyer, a biologist with Conserving Carolinas on her land prior to the flooding. On that day, he looked with her at the river bottom churned up and tire tracks visible in the mud. Some trees were gone from the riverbanks, with eroding soil where they once stood.
Huggins and Lohmeyer did not know the identity of the clean-up crew.
JBW is the prime contractor in Transylvania County, according to the Army Corps in a statement to BPR.
“No Right of Entry (ROE) is normally needed by contractors for work in the state’s waterway, unless contractors are unable to access the debris via the waterway,” Army Corps spokesperson Bobby Petty told BPR.
Over the past several months of debris removal work, counties have coordinated with the Army Corps of Engineers and its contractors to help clear the 7.3 million cubic yards of debris left behind after the storm.
The progress came at a cost. Videos of contractors’ vehicles driving upstream and piling up logs by the riverbanks have circulated.
In Transylvania County, one community member jumped in front of a debris removal vehicle in protest last month. A paddler’s protest in Franklin demanded a “reckoning” with companies protesters said are profiting from overzealous debris removal.
Commenters showed up in force at a public meeting in Macon County earlier this month, asking the county to ensure contractors were complying with environmental law.
“Like many of you, I was caught off guard by the scale and scope of this work,” commenter Jason Love told Macon County officials. Love, and others who took the podium after him, expressed surprise that the Little Tennessee River and other less heavily-impacted rivers in the region were to be subject to such an intensive removal process.
Even in parts of the region with heavier impacts, there’s been consternation. One former debris removal worker in more heavily impacted Mitchell County, Nathan Turpin, said he quit the job over what he was seeing.
During the course of what Turpin said were seven-day weeks, working 12 hours per day, he felt unsafe and worried that he was damaging the landscape in his home county.
“It's disheartening to see,” Turpin said. “I was there to help my community.”
He described creating ruts and moving rocks, disturbing the structure of the creek bed.
Turpin had hoped the job would get him through tough times, but felt he couldn’t stay.
“I was also there to, you know, make some money, but ultimately I walked away,” he said. “It's not something I want to be a part of.”
A web of workers
Debris removal is an arduous and complex process involving contractors, subcontractors, and monitoring companies, as well as input from governmental agencies like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
In North Carolina, counties take the lead on disaster management, including debris removal. Each county can elect to work with North Carolina Emergency Management and its pre-existing contractors, or the Army Corps of Engineers and its private contractors, who are paid by the cubic yard.
Ashbritt Inc., a Florida-based company, works as the primary contractor to clean waterways in Buncombe, Mitchell, Polk, and McDowell counties.
In regards to environmental caretaking and worker safety, Ashbritt Vice President Brian Thomason maintained to BPR that AshBritt and its subcontractors are in compliance with federal regulations.
“Before we ever go into the water,” Ashbritt Vice President Brian Thomason said, “Army Corps of Engineers provides us priority waterways based on assessments and also priorities that they may have received,” including information about sensitive habitat and historic sites.
Jackson County opted to find its own debris contractor for the sake of speed and expects to be reimbursed later through the state. The choice allowed the county to begin the clean-up work faster than they would have had they waited on federal assistance.
Jackson County emergency manager Todd Dillard said the county is contracted with DebrisTech, a monitoring company, and South Carolina-based Southern Disaster Recovery, both of which had prior contracts through the state.
For those working through the Army Corps, the lack of direct communication between county officials and contractors can be frustrating, Transylvania County Manager Jamie Laughter said.
“The county has not had a role in directing the contractor’s work, assessing regulatory compliance or how they go about their work because that falls to USACE,” Laughter said. “We did learn recently that we were supposed to be getting updates, but we were not receiving those until this week and as I understand, work is wrapping up.”
Regulators like the N.C. Wildlife Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as FEMA, are responsible for holding contractors accountable.
“The big threshold that cannot be crossed is you can't jeopardize the existence of the species,” Gary Peeples, a biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service, said.
The role of regulators isn’t necessarily to stop USACE’s work, but rather provide consultation, he said.
“When the dust settles and they have identified and tracked their impacts, we kind of just come behind and check their work and make sure that they considered all the possible impacts,” he said. “Having that information sets us up for the longer-term kind of restoration efforts."
Where is the debris?
Another challenge for debris removal is determining where the debris rests and whether some of it should be left alone.
Bill McClarney, a biologist with Macon County-based Mainspring Conservation Trust, said removal of too much woody debris presents a serious threat to the habitats of fish and other aquatic organisms.
“Somebody, in a remote location, draws a line around an area on a map and says that's a disaster area and maybe some of it isn't,” McClarney said.
He said he is disturbed by the possibility of healthy trees and habitat being hauled out in order to make the effort worthwhile for contractors.
The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission produced a map and one-page fact sheet of sensitive habitat and a fact sheet concerning best management practices in early April, which was shared with BPR.
“Best Management Practices” listed in the sheet include, where possible, avoiding using wheeled vehicles in the river, and to avoid cutting down living and non-hazardous trees and shrubs.
They are recommendations, as the Commission is not a regulatory agency, but as the Brevard NewsBeat reported, the Army Corps didn’t even reach out.
The Corps appeared to respond to these concerns early this month. It paused the use of wheeled equipment in waterways for 96 hours at the direction of FEMA’s Federal Coordinating Officer for Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and at the request of the North Carolina Department of Emergency Management.
During this pause, the Corps continued some less-invasive techniques at the shoreline and used floating debris removal vessels.
Petty, a USACE spokesperson, told BPR that without wheeled equipment, access was limited and productivity declined.
“A permanent restriction on such equipment would have rendered at least 25% of the debris completely inaccessible from the shoreline, while also extending the timeline for remaining debris removal by about 300%.”
Petty added that ceasing to use wheeled equipment would necessitate other, even more invasive and expensive debris removal measures, like cutting roads through the woods.
Ultimately, after review, USACE decided to continue the work as before, pressing towards the June 1 deadline, which is when the agency has said all of its debris removal work in WNC will be complete.
Conservation groups see evidence of harm
As work continues across rivers in the region, conservation groups are documenting its impacts on the landscape.
In a recent snorkeling expedition in the Little River, Conserving Carolina, the group helping Margie Huggins restore her land, found a number of crushed mussels.
The findings confirmed their fears that vulnerable wildlife had been harmed, Conserving Carolina scientist Hans Lohmeyer told BPR.
Though the river behind Margie Huggins’s house is public right-of-way, she worried the removal of logs and changes in the river bottom could increase flooding risk.
Huggins did manage to reduce the impact of debris removal there, in her backyard, convincing the crew that despite not being on her property, it still affected her.
She did this mostly just, she believes, through running out to speak with contractors as they were actively engaged in the work.
She is now in active conversation with biologists and the county to ensure some erosion control happens on her land after all is said and done, but she said she is still worried about the rest of the river.
“It's not that anybody's saying, ‘Oh my gosh, you couldn't come and do some work that was needed in the river.’ It just needed to be balanced and with care for everything in the river that needs to be protected,” Huggins said.
Lilly Knoepp contributed to this report.
Correction: This article initially stated Conserving Carolinas found broken turtle shells. They did not find turtles, only mussels.
In addition, SDR was originally stated to stand for Southern Debris Removal. It stands for Southern Disaster Recovery.
