Along the Green River near the Henderson-Polk county line, the water still doesn’t move the way it used to. Two years after Tropical Storm Helene tore through the Tuxedo Hydroelectric Station in a landslide, the plant that regulated this river’s flow for more than 100 years remains broken, leaving the Green with what locals describe as an uncertain future.
Before Helene, the Tuxedo station’s turbines ran six hours a day, releasing 200 cubic feet of water per second from 7 a.m. until 1 p.m., according to the Raleigh News & Observer. That controlled daily pulse has been replaced by water simply overflowing the dam continuously instead of in a concentrated release, the paper reports. Northbrook Power Management, which owns the dam, has confirmed separately that the facility is no longer able to manipulate either the natural lake levels upstream or the water flows downstream, according to Hendersonville Lightning.
The scale of the disruption is stark for paddlers. Shane Benedict told the News & Observer that if the hydro station operated normally, the Green would run roughly 300 days a year — compare that to the Linville River, which runs only about 50 to 70 days annually. Benedict ranks the Green River Narrows among the top five best-known rivers in the country among serious paddlers, a reputation built on its three miles of Class 5 rapids, part of a river system that also includes four miles of Class 2 and 3 water upstream and gentler Class 1 and 2 stretches below suited to tubing, using the standard 1-to-6 whitewater grading scale.
Tubing Company Swept Away, Now Rebuilt on Rain
Wendell Gillespie, 60, owns Green River Cove Tubing Company, a business his father opened in 1982. The outfit was swept away during Helene and stayed closed through 2024, reopening only this past May, per the News & Observer’s reporting. Gillespie said the business now depends on rain for customers, since the Tuxedo plant’s power releases used to reliably raise the river by as much as a foot on a predictable schedule…