Story by Rebecca Savidge
One year after Western North Carolina was devastated by Hurricane Helene, many areas are still suffering the impacts of the storm — and one of the overlooked aspects that’s still being rebuilt is the environment.
Jason Love, the associate director at the Western Carolina University Highlands Biological Station, said that Helene devastated the rivers in the western part of the state, affecting their surroundings, which will make the recovery of the whole area inevitably slow.
In addition to the flooding causing damage to the physical environment itself, he said that there are certain species of animals that may not recover fully, simply because of houses, bridges and dams being destroyed right next to their habitats. The species are primarily aquatic, which might then also impact recreation from a fishery standpoint.
“When you put that infrastructure in the way and build in places that probably aren’t the best places to build, you’re going to have these impacts,” he said.
Many of these homes are also built in floodplains because of the convenience of flat land, so they inevitably suffer more damage in these extreme storms, heavily affecting the surrounding environment.
Love said that often these buildings are then rebuilt in the same area, leading to the possibility of the same thing happening in the future, undermining the natural environment.
He believes that buying out at-risk properties in those areas and reconnecting the rivers to floodplains is a viable solution so that similar results do not occur in the future.
“That’s where we should be putting our money,” he said. “And not towards more engineering solutions where we’re trying to build stuff right next to the river.”
Less than a year after Helene devastated western North Carolina, another storm brought uncharacteristic damage to the central part of the state.
This past July, torrential downpours and strong winds from Tropical Storm Chantal led to record-breaking rainfall and flooding in parts of the Piedmont.
While most residents in the area did not lose power for more than a day or two, the environment is still experiencing the fallout of the storm months later.
In Chapel Hill, the Bolin Creek and Morgan Creek Trails, which many residents use daily for transportation and recreation, are still under repair, and some parts are still closed.
“We got extreme flooding, so there’s a lot of scouring, which is when the soil next to the trail has been washed away,” Town of Chapel Hill Parks and Recreation staff member Kevin Robinson said. “So there is, in some areas, a two-to-three-foot drop off right on the edge of the trail, and it’s also washed out underneath the trail, so there’s potential for the trail to collapse.”
Additionally, Robinson said that some of the bridge railings and retaining walls along the creeks have been damaged, as well as the asphalt on the trails themselves.
These extensive damages have led the Town of Chapel Hill to keep parts of the trail closed or less accessible so the public cannot use them.
“It’s a big disruption to people’s day-to-day lives,” Alex Carrasquillo, Town of Chapel Hill communications manager, said. “We know a lot of people count on that trail to be able to get around, both for leisure and to get to work and school and those things.”
While the town is encouraging residents to find alternative routes for transportation — like utilizing Chapel Hill transit routes — those who regularly use the trails and rivers for recreation are still being disrupted.
Ava Acton, a UNC student and member of the Naval ROTC program, said that the group regularly uses the Bolin Creek Trail for one of its physical fitness tests at the beginning of the fall semester. However, the closure of the trail made that impossible, forcing the group to move to a different location.
“It just generally affected the operational capacity of the UNC NROTC, and we had to make a logistical change early in the semester that we didn’t anticipate,” she said. “So [it was] largely inconvenient.”
In repairs, the Town of Chapel Hill is looking to not only rebuild parts of the trails that were damaged, but also create solutions to mitigate similar damage in the future.
“We don’t want to go in there and just open up the trail and do some work, and then two months later, we’ve wasted those efforts because another flood comes through,” Robinson said. “So we’re really looking at it, and that’s why we’re kind of taking our time. We’re going to figure out what the best approach is to move forward and build something that will withstand this, so that we hopefully don’t have these same issues the next time this occurs.”
Similar damage was seen in surrounding areas in the Piedmont, most notably including Jordan Lake and the Eno River State Park, from the same storm.
According to Kris Anne Bonifacio, the public information officer at N.C. State Parks, Jordan Lake experienced substantial flooding, and a large amount of debris washed into the lake. However, while the lake and its surrounding trails were closed for several weeks directly after the storm — and the opening of two new facilities managed by the park, the Deep River in Moncure and the Lower Haw River State Natural Area in Pittsboro, was delayed — most areas of Jordan Lake are now open.
But much of the area’s significant damage occurred less than 40 miles north at the Eno River State Park.
The park experienced unprecedented flooding, with the river reaching a historic high of 25.6 feet, compared to its typical range of 2 to 2.5 feet.
While some parts have reopened in recent weeks, including parts of the Fews Ford and Cole Mill Accesses, major damage was sustained at the swinging bridge at Cox Mountain Trail, which remains closed.
Though there is no exact date for when the remaining parts of the park will reopen, Bonifacio said they are working, in collaboration with volunteers, to continue improving conditions to increase accessibility.
“It was underwater for a significant amount of time, and I think it just made it very unstable, so we had to make a lot of repairs to it,” Bonifacio said. “But that is kind of the main area that is closed because we don’t have a way to get over the bridge, the river, basically. So we have to keep those trails closed, just for emergency purposes.”
Because this bridge and its surrounding trails are primarily used by pedestrians, Bonifacio said she has heard an influx of feedback from the community about the extended closures.
While residents witnessed the storm’s damage, Bonifacio said it was harder for them to understand why parts of the state park were closed because the damage in the area was so isolated.
“We definitely recognize that a lot of people who use the state park have been wanting to get the access reopened,” she said. “I think it was a major step this week when we were able to reopen the Fews Ford access, so hopefully that will help.”
And like the Town of Chapel Hill, the park staff has consistently been working to not only repair the trails and the bridge, but also take steps to ensure that similar damage will not happen in the future.
As natural disasters continue to become more common and destructive, creating long-term solutions for the natural areas in the state is most important for the preservation of the environment, according to Robinson and Bonifacio.
“We’re always trying to make sure that our trails are sustainable,” Bonifacio said. “I mean, that’s something not just with the river, but across the park system, even the parks that were damaged from [Hurricane] Helene, we’re trying to assess the trails, making sure that if we need to revamp trails to make them more sustainable, make them more resistant to damage in the future, I think that’s always an opportunity we’re going to take.”
