ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Officials in Asheville are scrambling to replenish clean drinking water two weeks after the remnants of Hurricane Helene debilitated critical supplies.
The North Fork Reservoir, just a few miles northeast of the hard-hit Blue Ridge Mountain town, supplies more than 70% of the city’s water customers. Earlier this week, the city received a hopeful sign: A 36-inch bypass water mainline was reconnected to the city’s water distribution system.
State and federal officials are looking to speed up water restoration by treating the reservoir directly. For now, the reservoir − normally clean several feet below the surface − is a murky brown from sediment.
“Priority No. 1 is to get clean, quality drinking water to everyone who doesn’t have that,” Michael Regan, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and formerly North Carolina’s environmental quality secretary, said on a recent tour of the reservoir. “And so as we look at private wells and the water system, we want to be able to provide every single asset we have.”