Hurricane Helene Clean-Up Efforts Continue in Piedmont Lakes

When September 2024 ended with a full week of rainy days in the Piedmont area, Kaity D’Angelo, a volunteer and community science manager with the Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation (CRF), knew waters would be high for the organization’s annual Catawba Riversweep.

The one day a year in which citizens from all over the Catawba-Wateree River Basin come together to clean up the lakes, rivers and streams across the basin was scheduled for Oct. 5.

Then Sept. 28 came and Hurricane Helene swept through the southeast, devastating large portions of western North Carolina and dumping nearly 20 more inches of rain on an already waterlogged region.

While the storm didn’t pass directly over the Catawba-Wateree Basin, the region would still see the damaging effects of that much rainfall coming down from the mountains.

“It was so much water in such a short span of time that we were concerned about how the basin was going to be able to keep up with that,” D’Angelo said. “One thing that a lot of other people really aren’t thinking about in those moments is, whatever is coming down that basin, whatever is coming down that 300-mile stretch of the channel and coming in from all those tributaries, that’s all going to end up here.

“So we knew that we would have a much larger area overall that we were going to need to respond to just because of that domino effect,” she continued.

One thing was clear: This was going to take more than a riversweep.

Water levels rose by a number of feet across the basin, flooding rivers and lakes and leading to the destruction of docks and other infrastructure that surrounded bodies of water from Lake James in Nebo, which saw the worst destruction within CRF’s coverage area, to Lake Wylie on the South Carolina border.

In the weeks that directly followed, CRF stayed out of the way of first responders and other officials who were carrying out search and rescue operations and other safety measures outside of the organization’s scope.

Volunteers with CRF were still able to assess the damage in the Piedmont, however, paddling more than 100 miles on scouting trips in the months after Helene swept through to gather the full scope of the hurricane’s impact.

When it was deemed safe to do so, CRF partnered with government agencies; Duke Energy, which maintains the lakes; organizations such as the NC Wildlife Federation; area residents who volunteered to help; and businesses like TowBoat US, Lancaster Docks, and Bartels Construction Solutions to start the massive Hurricane Helene cleanup needed at locations along the Catawba-Wateree Basin.

The NC Wildlife Federation (NCWF) took the lead on Lake Norman cleanup efforts. Alden Picard, conservation coordinator with NCWF, said the debris flows were too heavy to even get on the water in the weeks following the storm.

“There were coves in areas of Lake Norman that were completely covered in debris — piling, lumber, woody debris,” Picard recalled. “You couldn’t even drive a boat through it.”

On Oct. 26, a full month after the storm, it was deemed safe enough to hold a Hurricane Helene cleanup event with the community. Picard and around 70 volunteers worked together that day to remove around 20 tons of trash and debris from Lake Norman.

“It was an overwhelming response from the community to help,” he said. “We did large-scale removal of this debris with Lancaster Docks. We had heavy machinery, we had cranes and barges, because there was stuff that people couldn’t lift out of there — chunks of docks that weighed tons and billets from pontoon boats that people can’t get out of there.”

While NCWF focused on Lake Norman, much of CRF’s work was based at Lake Wylie and Mountain Island Lake.

D’Angelo reported a similar scene at those lakes, where they launched their first major cleanup on Nov. 2. Her team tagged certain large pieces of debris such as boat trailers or chunks of docks for the barges and boats with TowBoatUS to then pull to the shore for removal.

“It was dumpsters full of just treated lumber, essentially,” she explained. “But that’s really important to pull out because that wood is treated. So those chemicals, once they start to degrade in the water they leach out and they affect our water quality. So it’s important to get that stuff out.”

D’Angelo praised the work of the TowBoatUS teams, which she said were out day after day from the moment they could get back on the water.

Another local tow and rescue team, Sea Town Lake Norman, sent its teams up farther into the mountains following the storm, helping to pull 130 boats out of Lake Lure, which was devastated by the storm.

At Lake James, where a power station went down during Helene, taking away Duke Energy’s ability to control water level, the flooding was more destructive than other parts of the Catawba basin. It took longer for D’Angelo and her team to safely get out on that lake. Once they did, she saw destruction on a different level than farther down the basin.

“One of the most heartbreaking moments for me during one of these cleanups … we pulled what looked like a drawer to a desk. It was stuck about 5 to 6 feet up in the trees, and we pulled it out. In it are the remnants of a family photo album and some mementos,” she said. “You could barely tell. It wasn’t even in any condition that was well enough to try to be returned. Seeing that really hit home, the damage that Helene did to a lot of these areas and what people lost.”

Read more: Charlotte Musicians Launch DIY Drives to Aid in Helene Recovery (2024)

The clean-up efforts will continue well into 2025, D’Angelo said. As folks begin to de-winterize their boats and get back on the water, she emphasized that they should be aware of how things have shifted due to the storm.

She and her team found notable sandbars in Lake Wylie that were formed by Helene — areas that were once 20 feet deep and are now just 5. There could also be dangers lurking just under the surface, like the large boat trailer she and her team uncovered because they happened to spot a small knob from the hitch poking out of the water like a turtle’s head.

There’s also the deeper environmental damage caused by Helene, including erosion and over-sedimentation and other issues caused by the high velocity of the floodwaters rushing down the basin from western North Carolina.

“When Helene first hit, we knew there was going to be damage. We knew we were going to have some extra work to do. We definitely knew things were going to get flooded and there was going to be trash and shifts and whatnot,” she said. “What we didn’t realize, though, was how bad it was going to be. And once we found that out, we realized that this was going to be a recovery project that was going to be years in the making overall.”

The CRF team asks that anyone who’s aware of pollution or debris along the Catawba-Riveree Basin visit the organization’s Pollution Reporter website to report it so it can be cleared out through the proper channels.

Learn more: Keeping the River: Catawba Riverkeeper Talks Environmental Action (2021)

Lake Norman Wildlife Conservationists, the Lake Norman chapter of NC Wildlife Federation, is launching an Island Adoption Program to help restore Lake Norman islands after Helene. Email islands@lnwc.org if you’re interested in getting involved.