- Nobody alive has ever seen the river come up like that.

And it was actually the highest water level ever recorded in Asheville.

- [Narrator] Hurricane Helene brought a lot of water into the mountains of western North Carolina when they were already saturated by days of rainfall.

In some counties, over two feet of rain fell, causing rivers and creeks to swell their banks, and washing people and their homes, businesses, and belongings downstream.

MountainTrue and local Riverkeepers are watchdogs of the watersheds of western North Carolina, and they work with their communities to protect surface and groundwater.

- When we're looking at water quality after an event like this, we're looking at a really broad spectrum of things 'cause it's really hard to point the finger at a single source after an event like this.

Anything that had rainfall on it is in the river now.

- [Narrator] Erica is Riverkeeper of the Green River, an outdoor adventure paradise for fly fishers, rafters, paddlers, and hikers alike.

The Green was dramatically reshaped by the storm.

Mudslides crisscross a switchback that goes down to the river.

Powerful floodwaters carried away riverside houses.

- This was property, land.

This was houses that lived all along here.

- [Narrator] And a popular river access called Fish Top is almost unrecognizable.

- Actually, I'll give you a little perspective.

In between these rocks right here was the trail that you walked down to, gradually, to Fish Top.

All of this was wooded, trails through it.

And now.

- Wow, oh my gosh.

- And now.

- It's a cliff.

- It's a cliff.

It is a complete, absolute drop-off.

And this is nothing how it was, nothing.

There was like a pool here, and then this sand that has come in, obviously, was not there, but I'd say maybe on the other side of the sand was like all game lands.

- Wow.

- So like all of that was wooded, So it's completely different.

I mean it's kinda hard 'cause it was like so beautiful, like this is so, sorry, I didn't expect that.

Like it's, you know what it looked like.

It's just really hard to describe what it looks like.

- [Narrator] Erica has been helping Riverside residents like Brad test their well water to see if it's safe to drink.

- But do you let it run for a while already?

- Okay, heck yeah, alright, awesome.

- [Narrator] Brad's wellhead was submerged under several feet of floodwater, which may have introduced bacteria or other contaminants.

- The water sat right here for five or 10 minutes, and then it came up to right to the siding.

And that's when I was like well, it's going in, you know.

- Oh s--t, yeah.

But it sat there for about five minutes and then dropped.

I woke up at nine o'clock because my septic had back pressure on it.

The toilet gurgled.

That woke me up.

I, you know, sat up and looked out the window, and there was stuff floating across the yard, and I was like oh no, the water's actually really high.

So water came up, probably seven feet in about 20 minutes here.

We were able to watch the whole river left bank kinda just disintegrate.

You know, there was a 40, 50-year-old tree falling in about every 10 seconds.

You'd just hear the snap and the fall.

I moved here because of the Green River Narrows, one of the best pieces of, you know, Class V whitewater in the world, just a beautiful, beautiful place to be.

Everything is different in there, nothing the same.

- I'm gonna test it here.

I want you to go inside and test it from your house.

- Okay.

- Woo.

1:11, make a wish.

So I want you to take a Clorox wipe.

Take the little aerator off of the bottom of your faucet.

Wipe it off real good.

Let your water run for like a minute or two, and then you're gonna fill up this bottle with just your water to that line, - [Narrator] Erica and her Riverkeeper counterpart, Hartwell, in the French Broad Watershed, are helping people get access to free well-testing kits.

- Hey, how's it going?

- Good, how are you?

- Hey, good.

I'm Hartwell.

We're in the Cane Creek Watershed in Fairview, and we're offering well testing for folks that may have had their well flooded.

We got a bunch of Riverkeeper colleagues that came to town, which is awesome.

So we've been able to like divvy up the work.

We got folks in six locations around the watershed right now, all collecting well samples from folk.

Ah man, you're a star student.

- First one back.

- All right.

- [Narrator] For Riverkeepers who guard the health of their watersheds, seeing so much debris washed into the rivers they worked to protect was devastating.

- At first it was like, this is heartbreaking.

You know, I stood on the banks of the river and watched houses washed down, and gasoline washed down, and refrigerators, and you know, I've worked a long time to protect and clean up the French Broad River, and it seemed ruined overnight.

But then going around to all these communities, it was really heartwarming to see the resilience of people, like people just coming together, checking on their neighbor, helping people chainsaw out of their homes, cooking meals for people in a time where I think we're supposed to be like hyper-partisan, and nobody cares right now.

[laughing] - [Narrator] One place where people are coming together is in Marshall, where the French Broad River severely impacted buildings and businesses downtown, and in the nearby residential community of Rollins.

Residents and volunteers have been working to remove debris and thick mud from buildings like Marshall High Studios, home to the studios of dozens of artists like Frank Lombardo.

- River was like more than twice our height, I mean, over us.

You can see the water line on the bricks.

It got up to 20.08 feet.

It destroyed the first floor completely.

And a lot of people lost everything.

And we had a foot of mud everywhere in the building.

I can show you in here.

- Yeah, you can see the-- - You can see the water line.

That's the water line there, yeah.

- [Narrator] Fortunately, engineers have certified the building as structurally sound.

Now they're working to raise money to rebuild the inside.

- It's a lot of work, but we've had amazing volunteers.

So happy and proud and grateful to be part of this community.

Yeah, like they're hustling nonstop every day, getting us what we need, and we couldn't do it without everybody doing their part like that.

- [Narrator] Everyone doing their part in Marshall includes making sure volunteers have protective gear to avoid exposure to unknown hazards in the materials they're working with.

The staging area in local business Nanostead's parking lot has developed a well-organized process to decontaminate people when they're done for the day.

People are being cautious during cleanup because they're not sure what was left behind by floodwaters.

MountainTrue and the Riverkeepers are working to test soil and water throughout the area to bring people information about any potential health and safety issues.

- We want to know what heavy metals are in there.

We wanna know what chemicals, we wanna know what bacteria, we wanna know what's in there so that we can give people accurate information and then do something to address it.

- [Narrator] With the help of visiting Riverkeeper teams, samples have been collected across the French Broad's watershed, including in Marshall, to check contaminant levels.

And so far, Hartwell says the results have been a pleasant surprise.

- We know a lot of pollutants went into the river during the storm.

To see that a sample only have two pollutants show up, only one kind of being concerning to human health, and then the levels of that weren't super high, was very encouraging in that, you know, one sample in the one location.

A good sign so far.

- [Narrator] But efforts to clean up these rivers are only just beginning, and Hartwell warns it's going to be a long-haul effort that needs continued support.

- The areas that you can reach, you know, municipal parks, those will be cleaned up.

But the 90 plus percent of these sections of river that you can't reach by car or with heavy equipment are really gonna come down to groups like ours.

If this cleanup is left to groups like ours without significant resources, it's gonna be a long, hard recovery.

And a lot of places are gonna go out of business.

I mean, you can't do river trips on a section of river with 18 wheelers and metal and cars, so, like, we have to get that cleaned up, and we have to get that cleaned up pretty urgently for folks to be able to operate next summer, hopefully.

- [Narrator] In the Green, Erica is working with contractors to remove debris and continue to monitor water quality.

Fortunately, Brad's well came back clean, and E. coli levels in the Green River remain low.

But Erica is also worried about long-term impacts.

- It will be a very, very long road ahead, and those restoration efforts are gonna look different in each watershed.

This is not what we wanna see, right?

But like you envision her, like, in a new light.

She looks different, but she's still beautiful.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

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