Asheville has tap water, but no one knows when it will be drinkable

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Nearly a month after the remnants of Hurricane Helene ravaged western North Carolina, running water has now been restored to most of the region around Asheville — but you can’t drink it yet.

What comes out of the tap is often yellow or brown, and although it can be used to flush toilets and take showers, it is still unsafe for human consumption. Officials have given no indication of when the water will be safe to drink again, and the reservoir that feeds the system still looks like it is filled with chocolate milk rather than pristine water.

Obtaining clean water remains a daily concern for many residents, who head to disaster-relief sites to bathe, do their laundry and pick up bottles of drinking water. Large canisters stocked with well water dot some neighborhoods. Many restaurants and breweries that lack a clean water source remain closed.

“It’s the new normal, going around to find places to do everyday stuff,” said Lisa Nowell of Swannanoa, North Carolina, after she did laundry with her daughter at a disaster-relief site. “It has changed life so instantly.”

Although the lack of clean drinking water remains a challenge, many residents said they understood the headwinds that officials were facing in trying to claw their way back from what Gov. Roy Cooper has called “the deadliest and most damaging storm ever to hit North Carolina.”

The death toll from the storm in North Carolina is 97, with 42 of those deaths in Buncombe County, which includes Asheville. Cooper said Wednesday that the initial assessment of the total damage from Helene in the state was about $53 billion.

“It is a little wearing, having to do the bucket brigade and drive somewhere to take a shower, but I feel fortunate,” said Andrew Halprin, who lives in southern Asheville. “The people that are working on all of these problems are doing an amazing job.”

The region relies on the North Fork Reservoir, which holds 6 billion gallons of water and is the primary source for 80% of the water system, said Clay Chandler, a spokesperson for Asheville’s Water Resources Department. Landslides and erosion from Helene’s intense rainfall pushed sediment into the reservoir. The storm also caused sand and silt from the bottom to be stirred up to the top.

“We know this has been difficult for everybody,” Chandler said at a briefing Monday. “We are grateful to our customers for their patience.”

The untreated water in the lake is normally fairly clear, so the reservoir lacks a sediment basin that many other systems have to help remove clay particles. Winds have also disrupted other attempts to treat the lake.

Officials are using chemicals that help bind the sediment, so that it will settle safely on the bottom on the reservoir. They plan to treat the lake in phases, starting by sectioning off a 500-foot circle around the water intake with curtains that were to probably arrive last week.

“The water utilities in that region are doing an absolute great job out there with this situation,” said Joe Brown, an associate professor at the Water Institute in the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “It’s important that people understand the degree to which this has upended the water structure in this region.”

In a neighborhood in the River Arts District of Asheville, where many houses and other buildings were damaged by mud and flooding, residents have stacked cases of bottled water in front of their homes.

Some residents were critical of the federal and state government responses in the immediate aftermath of the storm, saying that it was left to local restaurants to deliver food to hard-hit communities and that residents had to clear debris from roads themselves.

But even so, in interviews last week, residents said the delays in restoring drinking water were not going to be a decisive factor in how they would vote.

“I’m not going to complain,” said Dwayne Brinkley, a resident who faulted the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s deployment of resources. He has been using the brown running water to clean his home and take showers. He uses a towel hung nearby to wipe his mouth to ensure that he doesn’t swallow any of the water, which reeks of the extra chlorine that officials are adding these days to prevent it from becoming contaminated again.

“I’m not going to knock it,” he added. “I’d much rather be clean.”

Brinkley said he had already voted for former President Donald Trump in the presidential election, just as he planned to do before the storm.

Some residents in mountainous rural neighborhoods around Asheville still do not have running water. Helene nearly cleared the forests surrounding their homes and washed away supply lines.

Officials have urged people to have their wells tested before using them. The county doesn’t charge for the test, but the process can take time.

Chris and Sherri Riffle would like to revive a well on their property to get clean water flowing, not only for their own home but also to let them reopen their bed-and-breakfast. But they said that getting back the test results may take two weeks or more.

The couple said they had already had to refund about $130,000 to guests, and had missed out on an estimated $100,000 in revenue. And they have been unhappy with how the city has handled its water restoration efforts.

“They had no plan when the system went out,” Sherri Riffle said.

Some businesses have reopened with workarounds such as using boiled or bottled water and paring down what they offer. Ben Colvin of the Devil’s Foot Beverage Company, which makes specialty soft drinks, has been splitting a tanker with 3,000 gallons of clean water with a brewery.

On Wednesday, Colvin cried when he and his staff were able to can sparkling lemonade and nonalcoholic Negronis for the first time since the storm hit.

“It was one of those moments that was so important that you forgot to get your phone out,” he said. “It puts a skip in your step to know we’re finally getting to things.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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