Hurricane Helene Cleanup Poses a Threat to Wildlife

Nathan Turpin joined the Hurricane Helene cleanup effort because he wanted to help.

Western North Carolina, where Turpin lives, was hit hard by Hurricane Helene. When the storm blew through the region last September, the resulting flooding killed at least 107 people, left another 330 or more homeless, and left tens of thousands more without electricity, running water, and other essential services. Turpin and his family lost power and running water for two weeks.

So when Turpin saw a job posting for an excavator operator with a cleanup company that had been hired by the Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to do debris removal in Mitchell County, where he lives, he applied, “not only for the money but also for the opportunity to help my community,” he said.

But the work he was doing seemed less like cleanup than just further destruction, Turpin said. USACE pays companies by weight to remove woody debris, so Turpin’s crew was ordered to rip trees out of the riverbank, tear down live branches, remove naturally occurring logs, and drive heavy machinery along the banks and stream bottoms. “[It was] just kind of a free-for-all,” he said.

Within two weeks, Turpin quit in disgust. “I’ve got to make a wage to live, but also, I have a little bit of morality,” he said.

Turpin’s allegations are not unique. Across Western North Carolina, locals have reported USACE-subcontracted companies overcleaning rivers. Environmentalists blame an expansive mandate, poor oversight by the USACE and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and an incentive to remove as much debris as possible for the devastation of these Appalachian wetlands. “One of my colleagues called it ‘subsidized vandalism,’” said Jason Love, director of the Highland Biological Station in Macon County. “Some of these streams may never be the same.” (USACE and FEMA did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

The southern Appalachians hold some of the most biodiverse freshwater ecosystems in North America. According to the National Wildlife Federation, they contain over 600 mussel and snail species, around 250 crayfish species, and more than half the 850 or so freshwater fish found in the US and Canada. A wealth of waterbirds, mammals, snakes, and amphibians, including the fully aquatic hellbender salamander, round out the region’s rich diversity.

Like their human neighbors, these animals were also hit hard by Helene, and some cleanup was absolutely necessary. Some rivers were “choked with dozens and dozens of cars and houses and shipping containers,” said MountainTrue Clean Waters director Hatwell Carson. “I think most folks, including myself, thought we might never get these cleaned up.” He said the USACE deserves praise for facilitating that cleanup so quickly.

But not all areas were hit so hard. In Macon County, Helene’s flooding was not even in the top 10 floods of the last 80 years, according to Love. But a series of small landslides in the county “opened up the door for the Corps to come in at the invitation of the county,” he said. 

USACE ended up identifying 142 spots for cleaning along Macon County’s waterways, from which contracted companies could clean a mile up and down the river. A familiar series of abuses appeared, he said—contractors removed decades-old wood from streams and cut live trees and branches, some of which were on private property. “Landowners weren’t notified. All of a sudden, they have trees missing that were there the day before,” Love said.

Hans Lohmeyer, stewardship coordinator for Conserving Carolina, said there were similar abuses in Polk and Transylvania Counties. In the latter, the Transylvania Times reported that landowner Laurie Wilkie had to jump into the Little River in front of heavy machinery to prevent them from taking trees off her property. 

The machinery itself also caused damage. While subcontractors used special hydraulic oil to prevent pollution and did use barges in some cases, they often drove heavy machinery straight through the riverbed. Lohmeyer noted one case where a post-cleanup snorkel survey found hundreds of crushed mussels in a known mussel bed, including the federally endangered longsolid and Appalachian elktoe mussels. In some areas, Lohmeyer said that the cleanup “looked like commercial grading.”

Even where there wasn’t wholesale destruction of a wetland, cleanup companies often excessively removed old, dead wood from the waterways. This wood provides sheltered pools for fish, still water for waterfowl, and hiding spots for crayfish, salamanders, and aquatic insects. Removing wood also makes these rivers flow faster—combined with the removal of riverbank vegetation, erosion is now much more likely along these waterways, Love said.

Theoretically, these sorts of abuses would be corrected by USACE oversight. While the Corps alleged that it monitored the cleanup, Turpin said that the crew only reviewed USACE regulations in training, and that “there was no one monitoring what we were doing.” In a recent Vox article, too, a series of state biologists with the North Carolina Wildlife Resource Commission that reviewed USACE’s cleanup plan alleged that the Corps showed little interest in adjusting their cleanup to protect endangered species.

Not every county chose to contract through USACE. Henderson County chose to hire contractor Southern Disaster Recovery (SDF), and Lohmeyer noted that their rivers saw far fewer abuses than neighboring counties. He attributed this to SDF working more closely with state biologists and the county paying them by linear foot of river cleaned, rather than by pound of debris, which removed the incentive to overclean the rivers. 

North Carolina is not the first place where USACE-managed cleanups have led to overcleaning. AshBritt International, a subcontractor that USACE regularly uses, was sued in Kentucky for violating private property rights during cleanup from the 2022 floods, and in California for removing excess dirt following the 2017 wildfires. Still, USACE hired AshBritt for the cleanup in North Carolina. 

Lohmeyer, Love, Carson, and Turpin were part of a group that met with Republican Representative Chuck Edwards (N.C.-11) to discuss the impact of the post-Helene cleanup. Following the meeting, Edwards’s office announced on June 4 that he had met with USACE and FEMA officials and drafted a plan to improve oversight and encouraged landowners to flag property that cleanup crews should leave untouched. Whether this strategy had any impact is unclear, however, and Edwards’s office did not respond to an interview request. 

As some of these cleanups are coming to a close, organizations like Conserving Carolina and MountainTrue are turning their attention to restoring these streams. In the short term, Carson said, this work will involve seeding and stabilizing banks and planting live sticks in the winter. In the longer term, there’s a need to plant trees and restore the streams themselves. But how long it will take these waterways to recover, if they ever do, is anyone’s guess, Carson said.

If there is a silver lining to this situation, Love pointed to the wide spectrum of people speaking up against the cleanup mismanagement. He described the crowd at the meeting with Representative Edwards: “One of the gentlemen there was wearing a Trump 2024 hat. Next to him was a ponytailed environmental advocate. And next to him was a fisherman,” he said. “Everyone loves their rivers around here.”