EPA's Hurricane Helene Response Activities
EPA’s ongoing efforts to support recovery from Hurricane Helene include:
Monitoring Water Quality
EPA teams are actively working with local agencies to monitor water quality in affected areas. Mobile water labs are deployed to test for contaminants, enabling rapid analysis and guiding advisories for the public. Since the beginning of October, EPA, its state partners and local utilities have made significant progress bringing drinking water and wastewater systems back online, including restoring service to more than 75 drinking water systems that serve approximately 260,000 people in the Asheville area.
Waste Management and Hazardous Waste Support
FEMA issued a mission assignment to EPA to collect oil and hazardous materials from orphan containers for processing and reuse, recycling or disposal in response to Hurricane Helene-related damage in Western North Carolina. EPA has Hazardous Materials Assessment and Mitigation Teams that are actively engaged with orphan container recovery, hazmat assessment and response in coordination with the NC Department of Environmental Quality (NC DEQ). Since clean-up efforts began in North Carolina, EPA has collected more than 1200 containers with oil, hazardous materials or propane.
EPA uses a variety of sources to identify target locations where possible orphan containers or spills are located, including a search and rescue database (SARCOPS) a FEMA platform, NC DEQ’s database, United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) aerial photography, local fire departments and emergency management agencies, National Response Center reports, and any visual identification by EPA and NC DEQ assessment teams.
EPA maintains a dashboard to track the status of target location assessments. A target location could contain one or more orphan containers or none. Targets are assigned to Assessment Teams to visually confirm whether they have oil or other hazardous material containers and/or whether there are confirmed spills of these materials. A recovery team is deployed to pick up the containers and/or perform any mitigation work. Hazardous materials that have been collected during the hurricane response are being transported to a staging are with the exception of a few materials that can be reused/recycled, as described in more detail in the paragraph below. The waste at the staging area will be characterized and disposed of at an appropriate disposal facility.
When possible, collected materials are being recycled or put back into use. For example, EPA has managed approximately 20,000 gallons of oil and oil-contaminated water recovered from various containers, tanks, basement, etc. and transported it to an oil recycler in Charlotte. The agency is also making propane tanks available for pick up by propane distributors to be put back in service. EPA is pumping oil out of displaced residential fuel oil tanks and leaving them in place so that residents can put them back in use after inspection.
Note to user: click on left and right arrow to view Target Location Statistic and Definition.
Technical Assistance for Infrastructure Recovery
EPA personnel are offering technical guidance to local water operators, supporting efforts to restore and maintain drinking water systems and other essential services safely.
Public Health Protection Measures
In collaboration with CDC guidance and local health authorities, EPA is helping to advise residents on precautions to prevent waterborne illnesses, emphasizing the importance of following local boil water advisories and staying informed through local health updates.