The town of Woodfin’s largest employer, Silver-Line Plastics, sits snug on the eastern bank of the French Broad River. For years, a grassy embankment separated its inventory — tight curls of black tubing and ramrod lengths of white PVC pipe stacked in chunky rectangular piles — from the water.
On Sept. 27, 2024, swollen by Tropical Storm Helene’s deluge, the river overflowed the levee and filled the Silver-Line lot like a bathtub, lifting its product like so many rubber duckies. Part of the dike gave way, and the pipe rushed into the French Broad.
The dike was swiftly repaired, but more than 20 months later, the incident represents one of Helene’s unhealed wounds. Snarls of pipe and leeching plastics still threaten wildlife and rivergoers downstream from Silver-Line…