Nearly two years after floodwaters from Tropical Storm Helene pulled thousands of PVC pipes into the French Broad River, creating an ongoing environmental crisis and safety hazard, the corporate owner of a riverside plastics manufacturer has emerged from a period of silence with promises to improve how it stores its goods.
At the same time, emails newly obtained by Asheville Watchdog confirm that a Buncombe County official warned the company of the risk — and attempted to impose measures that could have made the site more secure — more than two years before Helene.
Brad Burton, a retired county floodplain administrator, aired his concerns earlier this year, describing correspondence he’d had with an engineer seeking a development permit on behalf of Woodfin’s Silver-Line Plastics and its owner, IPEX. The actual emails, which the Watchdog received this month after a public records request, support his recollection: the threat of Silver-Line product washing away from its outdoor storage area “is quite real during ‘the big one,’” he wrote in 2022…