Debris Cleanup Efforts Continue in Gerton and Bat Cave After Hurricane Helene
As sunlight filters through the autumn leaves, Donovan Green and her team are hard at work on Hickory Creek, a waterway that runs through the towns of Gerton and Bat Cave. More than a year after Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc on these communities, the cleanup is far from over.
Green, who now leads a team for MountainTrue, an environmental organization, has been committed to this cause since August. Despite the passage of time, she emphasizes the ongoing nature of the cleanup efforts. “Folks think because it’s been a year, there must have been so much cleaning done, but in reality that’s not the case,” she said.
Teams from MountainTrue are tasked with removing debris from waterways, and they manage to extract approximately 10,000 pounds of trash daily across Western North Carolina, despite the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers having removed over four million cubic yards of debris already.
The crew, armed with essential tools, start their day with a meeting to strategize their approach. They then spend hours removing items like furniture, metal, and PVC pipes from the riverbanks, which are often found intertwined with nature.
Green shares an incident where tires used in the original construction of riverbanks have become problematic: “We looked up and there was a big, beautiful tree and some other things that were just being held up by a lip of tires that were still embedded in the riverbank because that’s how they built it in the first place.”
Thanks to financial support, including a $10 million grant from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and an additional $750,000 from the WNC Recovery and Resiliency Fund, MountainTrue has expanded its cleanup efforts. With these funds, the group has been able to employ 79 workers, including Jenni Brown, a former hairstylist, who felt drawn to the cause.
Jenni Brown, who joined MountainTrue after volunteering, describes the work as both physically and emotionally demanding. Fellow crew member Matt Willing echoes this sentiment, recalling the emotional impact of finding personal items amidst the debris.
The cleanup process is not without its challenges, as environmental concerns must be balanced with the need to remove debris. According to a report by the Citizen Times, decisions about what to leave and what to remove can be difficult. Green recalls having to displace a colony of mice to remove harmful materials: “You feel bad, but you don’t want this huge air mattress wrapped around three trees to be a home for a bunch of things because it’s just going to contribute to the microplastics that are leaking into our waterways.”
Over nearly two weeks, Green’s team has managed to remove about 3,800 pounds of debris from the site in Gerton, with plans to continue upstream as long as funding allows.
