Clancy Loorham stood waist-deep in the French Broad River, pulling out a broken piece of PVC pipe from the rocky bottom. When he peeked inside, he found a catfish looking back at him. Loorham and other volunteers have spent months cleaning up debris left behind by Hurricane Helene, which slammed through the North Carolina mountains just a year ago.
Floodwaters from Helene tore pipes like these from a nearby factory. Some pieces traveled as far as 90 miles away, ending up in Tennessee’s Douglas Lake. Covered in algae and river silt, the pipes have become accidental homes for fish and other creatures. But while nature tries to adapt, the damage from Helene and the cleanup efforts continues to affect the local rivers and streams.
The hurricane brought up to 30 inches of rain to the area, turning calm waterways into powerful torrents. Trees, homes, cars, and boulders were swept away. The storm broke flood records and even carved new paths for rivers. In the rush to help people and clear out wreckage, recovery crews sometimes caused harm to sensitive habitats. Contractors used heavy machinery and treated the rivers like highways, cutting down healthy trees and pulling out live root balls that fish rely on for shelter.
Conservation groups warn that these actions hurt the ecosystem. Trees along riverbanks slow down water flow and provide important habitat. Some contractors worked carefully, but others didn’t. Biologists found endangered Appalachian elktoe mussels crushed or injured during cleanup. Workers rescued dozens by moving them upstream or into hatcheries, but the damage surprised experts who have worked in the area for years.
The eastern hellbender, a rare giant salamander, has also suffered. Reports came in of dead hellbenders found far from the streams where they live, likely victims of the storm and the resulting muddy water stirred up by cleanup operations.
For many people living by these rivers, the changes have been tough. Vickie and Paul Revis lost their home to the swollen Swannanoa River. With no flood insurance and limited money, they couldn’t move. After staying in a camper for a year, they are finally moving into a new modular home raised above the flood level, helped by a local charity. Paul used leftover debris to build up the land and planted trees and flowers to steady the soil.
Groups like MountainTrue received a $10 million state grant to continue cleaning debris from rivers. Since July, they’ve pulled out over 75 tons of trash from about a dozen rivers. Many crew members are local rafting guides who lost work after the storm.
As they work, volunteers often see wildlife returning to the rivers, though sometimes it’s in the wrong places—like catfish hiding inside plastic pipes instead of natural homes. The crew hopes that future recovery efforts will focus more on protecting the environment while keeping people and infrastructure safe. For now, the cleanup goes on, with everyone hoping to heal these waters and the communities along them.