- South Carolina residents face deadline to get storm debris out to the curb after Hurricane Helene
- SCDOT to pick up Hurricane Helene debris for a final day in South Carolina
- Hurricane Helene destroyed this county's only hospital. Now, an urgent care facility is caring for the community.
- Asheville businesses underwater months after Hurricane Helene
- Feds propose protection for giant salamanders devastated by Hurricane Helene
Catawba Riverkeeper volunteers work to clean waterways post-Hurricane Helene
Cleanup continues one month after Hurricane Helene and Catawba Riverkeeper is looking for volunteers to help with the effort this Saturday, Nov. 2.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — One month after Hurricane Helene, folks are still cleaning up the mess the storm left behind.
It’s a task that’s no stranger to Catawba Riverkeeper, a group that organizes cleanups regularly to keep our waterways clear on the Catawba-Wateree River Basin.
They’ve been working all month long to clean up creeks, tributaries and lakes for the safety and health of people and the basin itself.
However, the damage the storm did goes even deeper.
That’s according to Kaity D’Angelo, the Volunteer and Community Science Manager at Cawtaba Riverkeeper.
“In its entirety, our basin went through a lot of different issues post-Hurricane Helene,” said D’Angelo.
She says parts of the landscape are now changed all because of fast-moving floodwater during the storm.
“Unfortunately taking with it a lot of homes, cars, you know, just general debris. Natural, but also human-made debris,” she said.
And everything floodwater takes, ends up in our lakes.
“It’s also going to take trash and it’s going to take pollutants like bacteria, gas tire particles that end up on the roadway,” said D’Angelo.
Catawba Riverkeeper volunteers sprung into action just a week later, beginning cleanup efforts along creeks and tributaries in the Charlotte area.
“We actually felt that it was unsafe to put people out onto the water at that time, given that the water levels were still high and the velocity was still high,” said D’Angelo.
By the end of October, it was finally safe enough to tackle Lake Norman. The first cleanup there happened on Saturday, Oct. 26.
“They had like 50-70 volunteers come out,” said D’Angelo. “They had some heavy equipment out there and they were able to fill, I believe, four 30-yard dumpsters completely full between natural and human-made debris. ”
Cleanup continues this Saturday, Nov. 2 at Mountain Island Lake and Lake Wylie.
D’Angelo said volunteers are working hard to make sure hazards don’t become a danger to people out on the water.
But the problems go deeper still.
“Over 2.5 million people throughout our basin pull their drinking water source from the Catawba River,” said D’Angelo. “So the more it that is in there, the more trash pollutants, the more bacteria, the more nutrients that’s in there, the harder it is for other, you know, the utilities and industries to then have to work to pull our clean drinking water out.”
Getting back to normal is a long way off, she said, but the cleanups will continue in the coming months to hopefully create a better, cleaner Catawba River Basin.
Catawba Riverkeeper is still taking volunteers for Saturday’s cleanup happening from 9 a.m. to noon.
You can sign up to volunteer here on their official website.
They also encourage reporting any debris or pollutants you see on the water using their Pollution Reporter tool.
Contact Destiny Richards at drichards5@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, X and Instagram.