During the water crisis caused by Hurricane Helene last year, a lot of people became so-called ‘‘water nerds,’ mastering new terms like ‘turbidity’ and ‘coagulation’ to better understand why our taps ran dry for weeks after the storm.
You could call Mike Holcombe, a former water resources director for the City of Asheville, the King of Water Nerds. He just published a book on the history of Asheville’s water system, called “The Story of Asheville's Water: Before and Beyond Hurricane Helene.”
BPR’s Laura Hackett sat down with Holcombe to discuss his new book, which takes readers from the original freshwater springs that locals drank from to the modern-day system that's navigating the how to be more resilient for future floods.
Holcombe’s Q&A with Hackett has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Laura Hackett: In your book, you briefly touch on the rumor that there are wood and terracotta water pipes in the system. Can you tell me more about what you know there?
Mike Holcombe: I'm really glad that you brought it up. It's a pervasive myth that the city installed wooden water lines.
Hackett: So you're saying there are no wood pipes?
Holcombe: I'm saying there's no wood pipes carrying water to customers in Asheville today. It’s feasible to think that there could be some water lines, not now, but years and years ago that were part of the Asheville system, but it wasn't anything that Asheville installed. There's no such thing as a wooden water line installed in the Ashville water system today. And the terracotta line was 145 years ago.
Hackett: Back in the late 19th century, early 20th century, our water system was really ahead of the curve. I remember in your book you said Asheville was the first place in the state of North Carolina to have a filtration system on its water.
Holcombe: It absolutely was, the North Fork Watershed actually became the source of Asheville's fame at the turn of the 20th century. Asheville heavily marketed the fact that they had the purest water in the United States and that honestly helped spur the growth of Asheville that culminated in the explosion of growth in the 1920s. And it's just been a recurring theme in the history of the water system over and over again. As people come here and discover the purity of the water, that's one of the reasons they want to stay.
Hackett: Where do you think we are now in terms of quality of water as it compares to other places across the country?
Holcombe: Clay Chandler, the water resources department public information officer, just recently said the turbidity in North Fork, which was such that such an issue post-Helene, is back to where it normally is, which is less than two turbidity units, which is what a lot of water systems hope to achieve after they treat the water.
The water at North Fork, normally, is so clean that what comes into the plant is better than what comes out of a lot of water plants.
Hackett: So, you're feeling overall good about the water system these days?
Holcombe: I do. I think there's an image out there that the water system's falling apart and it's decrepit and that kind of negativity which I don't believe could be further from the truth. Fundamentally, the water system is very sound.
Asheville has a permitted capacity of 43.5 million gallons of water per day. We're currently using less than 24 million gallons a day. So, we have a lot of water available for the future.
Hackett: That's so interesting. I mean, I think given the past year, you could understand why folks maybe feel less confident, less secure in the water system. A 53-day water crisis is not something, you know, everybody experiences. What can we do to make our water system more resilient to flooding and to the factors that caused this water crisis?
Holcombe: I think the main thing that can be done is to replace the transmission main that comes from North Fork. It was installed in the 1960s and it is a 36-inch steel line that was put in a “low elevation” that is the flood plain. That now has ruptured twice in the last 20 years.
So I think it's high time to have an overland higher elevation water transmission main that would be immune to – more or less – to the floods that have wrecked it the last twice in the last 20 years.
Hackett: So you're somebody who's put in a lot of time working on water systems. You worked at the city for a number of years for the water resources department. What do you think the city is doing right with its water system?
Holcombe: Well, it cannot be over emphasized how important it was that the city completed the improvements to North Fork four years ago. Specifically, they raised the damn four feet and they built what is called the auxiliary spillway. The auxiliary spillway functioned exactly as it was designed during Hurricane Helene. That is, it saved the dam.
Now, that means that six billion gallons more of water was not suddenly released down the Swannanoa River. Not only destroying the water treatment plan, but putting the city of Asheville out of the water business for perhaps years to come. It would have been an economic apocalypse for Asheville and Buncombe County to lose their water system.
And I don't think the city of Asheville gets enough credit for being out, way ahead of the curve and for seeing this kind of climatic events and shoring up the most important asset the city has, which is the North Fork and Bee Tree watersheds.
Hackett: Reading the book, I realized how much I took water for granted. What do you hope people take from this book?
Holcombe: An appreciation of not only what's happened before, but how important and how blessed Asheville is to have those water sheds and how it's paid off in the past. And how the protection of those watersheds in the future is of prime importance.
