The Eno River runs through west Hillsborough and along the River Walk downtown. (Photo: Lisa Sorg/Inside Climate News)
HILLSBOROUGH—About nine hours after Tropical Depression Chantal inundated central North Carolina last week, Jeff Mahagan’s phone woke him at 3:00 in the morning. The person working on call at the Hillsborough wastewater treatment plant was scared.
Mahagan, the town’s deputy utilities director for water treatment, didn’t immediately grasp the severity of the situation. He lives 20 miles away, where just three-tenths of an inch of rain had fallen…