{"id":864,"date":"2025-07-23T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/?p=864"},"modified":"2025-07-25T19:12:26","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T19:12:26","slug":"the-government-stepped-in-to-clean-up-a-disaster-in-north-carolina-then-they-created-another-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/23\/the-government-stepped-in-to-clean-up-a-disaster-in-north-carolina-then-they-created-another-one\/","title":{"rendered":"The government stepped in to clean up a disaster in North Carolina. Then they created another one."},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tNorth Carolina state biologist Luke Etchison holds a French Broad crayfish he found in Little River.\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

POLK COUNTY, North Carolina \u2014 The small section of forest before me looked as though it was clear-cut. The ground was flat and treeless, covered in a thin layer of jumbled sticks and leaves.  <\/p>\n

This region, a wetland formed by beavers near the South Carolina border, was flooded last September by Hurricane Helene<\/a>. But it wasn\u2019t the storm that razed the forest. It was the machines that came after. They were part of a hurricane cleanup effort, bankrolled by the federal government, that many environmental experts believe went very, very wrong.  <\/p>\n

Helene hit North Carolina in late September last year, dumping historic amounts of rain that damaged thousands of homes, killed more than 100 people<\/a>, and littered rivers with debris including fallen trees, building fragments, and cars. In the months since, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has sponsored an enormous cleanup effort in western North Carolina. It focused, among other things, on clearing debris from waterways for public safety. Storm debris left in rivers and streams can create jams that make them more likely to flood in the future.  <\/p>\n

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In some parts of the state, however, cleanup crews contracted by the federal government removed much more than just dangerous debris. According to several state biologists, environmental experts, and my own observations from a recent trip to the area, contractors in some regions cleared live trees still rooted in the ground, logs that were in place well before the storm, and other natural features of the habitat that may not have posed a risk to public safety. <\/p>\n

These experts also told me that the Army Corps of Engineers \u2014 a government agency tasked by FEMA to oversee debris removal in several counties \u2014 failed to coordinate with the state wildlife agency to minimize harm to species that are in danger of extinction. Those include federally endangered freshwater mussels, which are essential for their role in keeping rivers clean, and hellbenders, iconic giant salamanders that the federal government says are imperiled<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In some stretches of rivers and streams, the contractors ultimately did more harm to the environment than the storm itself, the experts said. The many scientists and environmental experts I spoke to say the main problem is the compensation system for companies involved in disaster recovery: Contractors are typically paid by the volume of debris they remove from streams, creating an incentive for them to take more debris than is necessary.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThey just removed everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hans Lohmeyer, stewardship coordinator at Conserving Carolina<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

That\u2019s what happened in this partially destroyed beaver wetland, according to Hans Lohmeyer<\/a>, the stewardship coordinator with an environmental group called Conserving Carolina, who took me to the wetland in June. \u201cThey just removed everything,\u201d Lohmeyer told me, pointing at the bald patch of forest where he said live trees that had survived Helene once stood. \u201cIt\u2019s more advantageous for them to remove it all because they\u2019re getting paid for it.\u201d  <\/p>\n

The damage from Helene was relatively minor here, Lohmeyer said. And he claims that debris churned up by the storm didn\u2019t pose a serious flood risk. The wetland is a large natural area with few homes or buildings and plenty of room for floodwaters, he said. Yet contractors still leveled parts of the forest with excavators, clearing important wildlife habitat.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve just seen tons of excessive debris removal,\u201d said Jon Stamper<\/a>, river cleanup coordinator with MountainTrue, a nonprofit that\u2019s being funded by the state<\/a> to clean up debris in smaller waterways. \u201cI couldn’t even begin to tell you how many reports and phone calls and public outcries we’ve had about this.\u201d Plenty of contractors have done a good job, he said, but many seem to be \u201csimply grabbing anything they can to make more money.\u201d <\/p>\n

Cleanup contractors have faced scrutiny before<\/a>. In the months after deadly floods swept through southeastern Kentucky<\/a> in 2022, a report by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting claimed<\/a> that debris-removal contractors \u2014 including AshBritt and its subcontractors, one of the firms contracted by the Army Corps in North Carolina \u2014 took trees they shouldn\u2019t have and ignored complaints from residents, prompting lawsuits<\/a>. (At least some of the claims against the company have since been dismissed, court records show.)<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the risk of climate change: Rising global temperatures are only likely to increase the need for debris removal, by making natural disasters like floods<\/a> more frequent and severe in some areas. That will come at a steep cost to public safety and to the economy \u2014 Helene\u2019s costs have so far amounted to nearly $80 billion<\/a>. And without better cleanup systems in place, it will be especially devastating for the wild animals that need intact ecosystems to survive.<\/p>\n

Scientists say government contractors were careless and likely killed scores of endangered species<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I initially traveled to North Carolina for a story<\/a> about how damage from Hurricane Helene is pushing some already rare animals closer to extinction. For endangered salamanders like the Hickory Nut Gorge green \u2014 a striking amphibian with black skin and splotches of green \u2014 forest loss caused by Helene\u2019s floodwaters is a new and urgent threat.  <\/p>\n

But as I spoke with experts for the story, they told me that a bigger problem for animals in some rivers and streams has actually been the cleanup after<\/em> the storm. <\/p>\n

To clean up debris from Helene, counties in western North Carolina either enlisted help from the Army Corps of Engineers \u2014 which then hired contractors \u2014 or contracted debris removal <\/strong>companies themselves. In both cases, FEMA provided financial support.<\/p>\n

According to three state biologists and several other experts familiar with North Carolina\u2019s stream ecology, it was debris removal contractors working under the Army Corps that created the worst environmental problems. <\/p>\n

AshBritt, one of the Corps\u2019 big contractors, managed debris removal in Polk County, where I saw the partially deforested beaver wetland. I also visited a stream west of Hendersonville called Little River that was cleaned up by a different Army Corps contractor. <\/p>\n

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Share a tip<\/h2>\n

Do you have information about disaster cleanup in North Carolina? Reach out to benji.jones@vox.com<\/a> or benjijones@protonmail.com<\/a> (encrypted). Find me on Signal at benji.90. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In Little River, cleanup contractors severely damaged the stream ecosystem, which is home to the world\u2019s highest density of the endangered Appalachian elktoe mussel, said Luke Etchison, a biologist at the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC), the state wildlife agency. Giant excavators drove over the riverbed, almost certainly crushing elktoes and burying rocks used by hellbenders, the largest salamanders in North America, he said. <\/p>\n

The contractors also left parts of the bank bare and almost certainly removed natural habitat features that were not a flood hazard, according to Etchison. <\/p>\n

On a warm and sunny morning in June, Etchison and his colleague Michael Perkins, another state biologist, visited Little River for an informal survey. I tagged along. The river was shallow and calm with a rocky bottom and flanked by shrubs and trees. It looked like a pretty typical river \u2014 and it was beautiful. We threw on wetsuits, goggles, and snorkels and waded into the cold water. <\/p>\n

It was only when we swam around with our heads tilted to the riverbed that I started to see some of the impacts Etchison was describing: crushed elktoe shells, broken rocks, and hardly any of the debris that crayfish and hellbenders use, such as old logs and large, flat boulders. Perhaps most telling was that we saw fewer than two dozen elktoe mussels that day. Past surveys at this exact site turned up several hundred of them, Etchison said.<\/p>\n

\"mussels<\/p>\n

Perkins said that people often have the perception that debris removal is \u201ccharitable work,\u201d but it\u2019s not. \u201cThis was a taxpayer-funded endeavor,\u201d he said, and some contractors \u201care making millions by removing not just woody debris but also thousands of live, healthy or otherwise undamaged trees and vegetation that pose no risk to life or infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n

In another river, known as the West Fork French Broad, a technician working with NCWRC told me that he saw similar signs of damage. Rocks that hellbenders live under were fractured, covered in sediment, or pushed into the riverbed, he said. From his experience walking the stream before and after debris removal, he also claims that contractors removed habitat features that were not a flood risk \u2014 either because they were here before the storm or not obstructing the channel. \u201cI don\u2019t know what\u2019s a more telling sign that something is not a threat to a future flood than something that was in the river before this flood and in the exact same place after,\u201d the technician told me. <\/p>\n

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\u201cThey were operating in these rivers, treating them like highways, driving up and down, crushing everything.\u201d <\/p>\n

Lori Williams, state wildlife biologist<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

Etchison and two other state biologists allege that the Army Corps made little effort to coordinate with NCWRC to avoid harming threatened and endangered species. Once they learned that debris removal was underway, NCWRC sent Army Corps and other disaster recovery officials a one-page document with guidance on how to minimize harm to the ecosystems, such as by leaving stumps in place and, when possible, driving machines on the bank and not in the riverbed. <\/p>\n

The agency also produced detailed maps that marked areas with rare species, including the section of Little River that I visited. In those areas, the maps say, contractors should avoid running heavy machinery in the stream bed. NCWRC biologists asked the Corps to coordinate with them if they\u2019re clearing debris from rivers in those areas.  <\/p>\n

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\u201cWe gave them [the Army Corps] all of this information and they ignored it,\u201d Lori Williams, a conservation biologist and hellbender expert at NCWRC, told me. \u201cThey were operating in these rivers, treating them like highways, driving up and down, crushing everything.\u201d <\/p>\n

Early one morning I talked to a couple workers who were clearing debris from a stream north of Asheville. They were both from out of state and hadn\u2019t heard any complaints about their work. Locals were happy they were cleaning up, they told me. <\/p>\n

But <\/strong>I also heard another story. A man named Nathan Turpin, who briefly worked for a subcontractor of AshBritt doing debris removal, told me that he left the job, in part, because of the focus on \u201cproduction.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI ended up walking off the job just for the fact that we were pressured to produce a lot of yardage of debris every day to make a profit,\u201d Turpin, who said he drove a dump truck, told me. \u201cThere were a lot of plants and trees I saw that were being destroyed for no reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

Who deserves blame \u2014 and are they accepting it?<\/h2>\n

No single company or organization is at fault for the mismanaged debris removal, experts told me. Cleaning up involves a messy constellation of state and federal government agencies, private contractors and subcontractors, and independent monitors that audit the work. There are so many people involved that it\u2019s difficult to figure out who does what \u2014 and who\u2019s paying for it. And when you start asking questions, everyone involved tends to just point at each other. <\/p>\n

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Key takeaways<\/strong><\/h2>\n