ASHEVILLE – Brett Laverty stands knee-high in the middle of Sweeten Creek. It’s an unusually hot April afternoon – close to 80 degrees – without a cloud to hide behind.

“You smell that?” Laverty said, sniffing the air as a breeze moves across the water.

It’s an unmistakable odor, and it’s not the sweet smell of spring. It’s a sickening whiff of petroleum baking in the heat where it has seeped out of fuel tanks, into the riverbank, and now lies in a thick, rusty brown scab of sludge on top of the water, along with plastic water bottles, a basketball and other trash.

Laverty, a hydrogeologist with the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Water Resources Division, is not out for a cooling dip in the creek, he’s at the Biltmore Village site to take water samples above and below the oil spill, and send them to a lab in Raleigh to test for volatile organic compounds.

It's one of the many dirty duties that come with the job on the front line of guarding the French Broad River, its tributaries, and making sure all surface water in Western North Carolina meets safety standards for human health, aquatic life and the environment.

On the eve of the 49th Earth Day, and 47 years after the 1972 passage of the federal Clean Water Act, which charged the Environmental Protection Agency to set standards for water quality and put caps on pollutants “to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters,” it can sometimes be hard to tell if the environmental protection laws have had much of an impact.

An EPA proposal now under consideration to reduce what waters are protected under the Clean Water Act might further set back advances made in cleaning up our waters, conservation groups say.

RELATED: How common are fuel spills in the French Broad River?

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The leak from Asheville Oil was found in November and Laverty makes monthly visits to take water samples.

He also makes weekly inspections to make sure the company is maintaining the oil booms, which catch and absorb the fuel before it flows any farther down Sweeten Creek, which empties into the Swannanoa River, and then to the French Broad, where it will flow right through Asheville.

So far, the samples Laverty has taken over the past five months show the drip, drip, drip of the oil into the creek has not subsided, but it hasn’t moved beyond the booms.

Division of Water Resources: Responsible for 50,952 stream miles

Laverty’s success in so far containing the oil to Sweeten Creek is a small one in his enormous, never-ending job on the front line of doing everything from routine water quality monitoring across 19 counties to chasing hot spots.

“We check on anyone who has a discharge, like MSD (Metropolitan Sewerage District), anything with a discharge pipe, whether municipal sewer or industry, surface water discharge, sediment, anything that’s hurting the beneficial use of the river, which is swimming, boating, aquatic life,” Laverty said.

“In January I was working a train wreck in McDowell County that dumped ammonium nitrate. This morning I showed up to sample wells in Haywood County for pesticides, and then wound up looking at a landslide. So I never know what I’m going to do each day.”

He added, "I don't think a lot of people realize what we do."

Down on the French Broad, a wide, flat river that runs through the heart of Asheville’s downtown and is alternately adorned with willowy river birch, oil tanks, greenways, old warehouses, parks, breweries and outfitters, the water is always brown.

It’s even more so after a heavy rain, leading locals and visitors to ask, is it clean? Is it safe? The answer is usually — it's complicated.

The DEQ’s Water Resources Division is responsible for about 50,952 stream miles in North Carolina.

The Asheville Field Office in Swannanoa has 15 employees who monitor 13,382 miles of streams as well as lakes and other surface waters in 19 WNC counties.

Sweeten Creek is an example of one of the many small waterways that drain the French Broad River Watershed, which starts at the headwaters in Rosman in Transylvania County.

One of the oldest rivers in the world, the French Broad is also one of a few that flow north, making its way to the Middle French Broad, including the Hendersonville and Asheville areas, and continues the Lower Section in the Marshall and Hot Springs area of Madison County.

How federal, state agencies help local rivers thrive in communities

The seminal history of the region, “The French Broad,” written by Wilma Dykeman in 1955, told the often sad story of the mighty river degraded by logging, industry effluent and sewage that was routinely dumped into the river like a moving garbage can, making it “too thick to drink and too thin to plow.”

The book was the first call to arms in the region about the plight of the smelly, dying river.

The Clean Water Act was among a suite of environmental laws passed in the 1970s including the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act, to start cleaning up human-made messes.

It is the blueprint by which the federal, state and local governments care for waterways.

“The Clean Water Act has been revolutionary,” said Geoff Gisler, senior attorney, Southern Environmental Law Center in North Carolina.

“What we have seen across North Carolina and the South, small towns that used to turn their back on the rivers that flow through them because they’re so polluted, are now physically redeveloping to make the rivers a centerpiece of their communities.”

Included are cities like Greenville, South Carolina, and its Reedy River and Asheville and its French Broad, now a hopping hub of businesses, artist studios, parks, paddling, breweries and homes.

One of the major reasons cities have been able to turn their economies to revolve around rivers and the tourism they bring, is with state agencies, such as the DEQ, which is charged with enforcing the Clean Water Act, with water quality monitoring, strict laws on pollution, requiring permits for discharging, and issuing fines and requiring remediation for violations.

“We certainly haven’t achieved the goals of the Clean Water Act of making all of our waters swimmable and fishable, and eliminating discharges. There are significant problems. But we have made so much progress, it’s hard to remember how bad things were, and people tend to forget,” Gisler said.

Protecting the French Broad River is no small task

Protecting the French Broad River involves many programs in Water Quality Regional Operations, said Landon Davidson, regional supervisor in the Asheville Regional Office.

These activities include approving stream modifications, inspecting permitted facilities such as municipal wastewater plants, animal operations, and spray irrigation systems, responding to complaints and emergencies, conducting fish studies, partnering with state and local health programs, and more.

The Water Resources Division monitors the river monthly at different sections for fecal coliform, which denotes the presence of bacteria from humans, coming from sewage leaks or septic systems, or from animals, usually from agricultural operations.

The fecal coliform standard they’re looking for is an average of 200 colony forming units per 100 milliliters of water, based on at least five consecutive samples examined during any 30‐day period, and not to exceed 400 CFU/100 ml in more than 20 percent of the samples examined during that 30 days.

Exceeding this standard, which can occur after a heavy rainstorm or a sewage spill, can lead to a “river closure,” which is determined by Buncombe County Health and Human Services.

RELATED: Sewage spill in French Broad River leads to health advisory

RELATED: French Broad safe again after sewage spill

This happened last September when 420,000 gallons of sewage spilled from a broken pipe from a business on McDowell Street into Town Branch (formerly called Nasty Branch) and into the River Arts District of the French Broad.

The health department placed signs at eight access points along a 20-mile stretch from Hominy Creek along the river as it flows north to Ledges Park, warning people that the until the water is declared safe, they – and the pets - should avoid all activities, including fishing, swimming, wading, tubing or rafting.

The advisory was in effect for five days.

At the time, Dr. Jennifer Mullendore, Buncombe County Health and Human Services medical director, said anyone coming into contact with or swallowing water polluted with sewage could become ill with gastroenteritis (vomiting, diarrhea) or infections of the skin or eyes, days to weeks later.

Last year in the French Broad there were some 30 “sanitary sewer overflows,” defined as any sewage that spills into a creek, or any spill onto ground, in excess of 1,000 gallons, some the result of storms or 100-year-old clay pipes showing their age.

The Metropolitan Sewerage District worked to contain the spill and remove the pollution before the bulk of it hit the French Broad.

There were also numerous fuel spills in the French Broad including a 1,000-gallon spill from Mountain Energy above-ground storage tanks Feb. 4, 2018, near the intersection of Lyman Street and Riverside Drive. It also caused a river closure to humans and pets, and was called one of the river's most egregious hazardous waste spills in years.

The company was fined $6,200 for water quality violations.

In Buncombe County alone last year, the N.C. DEQ was investigating 1,200 oil spills from commercial and noncommercial tanks under investigation, said Caroline LaFond, acting regional supervisor with the agency’s Division of Waste Management, Underground Storage Tank Section in Asheville.

Thousands more occur each year across the rivers, streams and lakes of Western North Carolina, according to the DEQ.

French Broad River: How clean is it?

In instances like these, closures are necessary because of the river’s rating as a “Class B” stream.

All surface waters, such as streams, rivers and lakes, in North Carolina are assigned a primary classification by the N.C. DWR, to define the best uses to be protected within these waters (such as swimming, fishing, drinking water supply) and carry with them a set of water quality standards to protect those uses, Davidson said.

All waters must at least meet the standards for Class C waters, used for “secondary recreation,” including fishing, wading and boating and other uses where humans’ body contact with the water is “infrequent.”

Generally, Davidson said, the French Broad, from 0.2 miles downstream of the confluence with Mills River to the North Carolina/Tennessee border is rated Class B. That means it is protected for all Class C but has an extra layer of protection – Class B streams are meant for primary recreational activities that include swimming, skin diving, water skiing and similar uses where body contact with water is frequent.

The Division of Water Resources is required to release a list of impaired streams every two years, also known as the 303(d) list, which shows waterways that are not meeting state water quality requirements, or don't support designated uses such as swimming, shellfish harvesting or supplying drinking water.

Some factors that can lead to a waterway's listing include bacteria, chemicals, sediment, turbidity or excessive mud, and stormwater that carries oil, grease and other pollutants from roads and parking lots.

The 2018 303(d) list has several repeat offender streams, including Boylston Creek and Mud Creek in Henderson County and Ivy Creek in Madison County.

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The French Broad River is clean pretty frequently, but also dirty a lot more than we’d like it to be,” Hartwell Carson said while out at Hominy Creek on a weekly round of water quality sampling for fecal coliform and e coli, both indicators of bacteria pollution from sewage, septic or agriculture.

Carson is the French Broad RiverKeeper, which is a program of the environmental nonprofit MountainTrue, and part of a national RiverKeeper program that began on the Hudson River in New York.

“We’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go,” he said.

The river has recovered so well from its open sewer days that it supports a constantly-growing riverside economy, thousands of boaters and anglers and in Woodfin, a world-class, $18 million project is underway that will include parks, greenways and the Woodfin Whitewater Wave, an in-river feature expected to draw boaters from across the country.

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Last year the riverkeeper released the “State of the French Broad River Watershed,” the first published report that grades the cleanliness and water quality of 62 creeks and streams throughout the French Broad Watershed.

The next report is expected in May.

But how clean is the water, really? It is brown, after all.

That depends on where you’re standing, or floating, the day of the week, if it has rained recently, and many other factors, Carson said.

The report combined testing results from the DEQ, the Volunteer Water Information Network, the Stream Monitoring Information Exchange and MountainTrue’s volunteer water quality monitoring programs, giving each stream a grade from A through F.

An A grade is given to streams that have excellent water quality and low pollution levels, and Fs are given to streams that have poor water quality. Sixty-six percent of streams scored A or B, a vast improvement from decades past, Carson said. However 34% of the rivers were rated a C or a D.

The four cleanest streams were the Middle Fork French Broad River, Cathey’s Creek, Cataloochee Creek and the Pigeon upstream of Canton, all with 100 points.

The dirtiest were Turkey Creek (60 points), Newfound Creek (62.5 points), Boylston Creek (65 points) and Fines Creek (65 points).

The report serves as a useful guideline, but people need to use their own judgment before getting in the river since water quality varies with the weather conditions — it is usually dirtier right after a heavy rainstorm.

Sediment and bacteria pollution are the most common sources of pollution in the French Broad Watershed, Carson said. Sediment pollution is caused by runoff from construction sites and agricultural operations as well as eroding stream banks. Bacteria pollution comes from agricultural runoff, sewage leaks and faulty wastewater treatment plants.

River needs lots of helping hands

Keeping streams at a water quality that meets their intended use takes the work of many hands, in addition to state regulators.

The sewage and fuel spills cited above were discovered by members of the public who alerted authorities, highlighting the importance of river users taking ownership of their river.

The Environmental Quality Institute, a Black Mountain nonprofit that gathers scientific data, also works to keep the French Broad River safe.

Executive director Ann Marie Traylor said 25 volunteers test for chemicals at eight sites in Buncombe County, and a wider network tests 160 sites in 15 counties. The work has been going on since 1990 to test for the ecological health of the river.

In addition to chemical testing for eight parameters – ammonia, nitrates, orthophosphates (phosphorous), turbidity (clarity) total suspended solids, conductivity, alkalinity and pH, EQI volunteers also test for invertebrates, aka river bugs, such as caddisflies, stoneflies and mayflies, which are sensitive to pollution and whose presence, or absence, can be an indicator of water quality.

“For the French Broad River, we’re not seeing a ton of change over time. We’re seeing change in rainfall. We definitely see water quality declines as you go downstream, which isn’t super surprising,” Traylor said.

“The power of our data is in working with all the nonprofit partners and local governments that are putting money into conservation efforts in our watershed. Water quality is really an economic driver.”

Eric Bradford, director of operations for Asheville GreenWorks, grew up volunteering for the nonprofit, which began as Quality Forward in the 1970s. He’s now in charge of the many massive river cleanups the group undertakes each year.

In 2018 the group had 265 projects, 186 of those were trash cleanups, working with 3,542 volunteers who recovered 23,175 pounds of trash from local waterways (and another 47,470 pounds from the land).

The group also employs three Trash Trouts, devices suspended in the river to collect trash. To date, the three “trouts” have collected 3,475 pounds of human-made litter. The majority of the trash is plastic drink bottles.

“I’ve seen a dramatic change for the better in our rivers and streams. My first few river cleanups shocked me to amount of trash that had accumulated over the years,” Bradford said.

RiverLink, a nonprofit formed in 1987 by Karen Cragnolin to revitalize the riverway through Asheville and is now a land trust, is still working to protect and promote the river.

Executive director Garrett Artz is the co-chair with Maria Wise of the Mills River Partnership of the new French Broad River Partnership.

The consortium includes conservation groups, the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other government groups, outdoor outfitters, breweries and other concerned businesses, with the mission to maintain and improve stream health within the French Broad River Watershed for environmental and economic benefits.

One of the first projects will be to secure funding to commission an economic impact study on water quality on the local economy, Artz said.

In 2013 an estimated 35,000 people took float trips down the French Broad through Asheville. In 2017 there were well over 100,000 floaters, Artz said, adding that was probably a conservative number.

Not only are more people on the river, but two major brewers, Sierra Nevada and New Belgium, opened up shop along the river.

“The French Broad River at the end of the day is still better than in the last four to five decades,” Artz said. “It’s acceptable for people to be in the water, but we’d like it to be cleaner. We don’t want to take a step back with all the construction and development going on.”

Paddling season in full swing

Heath White, who for eight years has run Zen Tubing on the French Broad River with Riverside and Brevard Road locations, bristles at the idea that the river is anything other than pristine.

“When people ask me if the French Broad is clean I ask them, ‘how many people do you know have gotten sick by getting in the French Broad River?’” he said.

White, 50, grew up on the banks of the river in Bent Creek and said he remembers watching people back up their trucks full of garbage and dump it into the river, and being able to smell effluent from the old Ecusta paper plant a mile down the river.

“Now I see river otters and osprey and crawfish,” he said referring to wildlife that have returned to the river.

He said he has 60,000 customers tube down the Middle French Broad each year.

Ben Crowe, owner of Asheville Outdoor Center, which has been leading guided canoe trips for nearly 30 years on Amboy Road, and also rents canoes, kayaks and paddle boards, said most of his guests are from out of town, and even from around the world.

“What I tell people when they ask about the brown water, is it doesn’t mean it’s unhealthy water,” Crowe said. “When and if we get three and four days of no rain, the water will start turning emerald green again, which is a beautiful color.”

The problem, however, is often the rain. Last year Asheville had a record amount of precipitation — 79.21 inches, nearly double the average. Environmental scientists say that climate change - the warming of the Earth due to greenhouse gas emissions - will only continue to cause extreme weather events, such as hurricanes and flooding, another battle in keeping the river clean.

“It’s very safe to swim in. We’re out there all the time playing, but have never gotten sick. I can almost promise, as long as you’re not drinking it, you’ll be fine.”

If there is heavy rain or a pollution spill, there’s always the option to go to the source.

Headwaters Outfitters sits right where it says, at the headwaters of the French Broad River in Rosman, Transylvania County. The business holds guided and self-guided paddle trips on the calm, clear waters of the source.

“Our water is coming straight out of the mountains. It has only increased in cleanliness in the last 25 years,” said director of operations Jessica Whitmire, whose parents started the business 27 years ago.

Floats are only on the first 20 miles of river to Brevard, although they offer shuttles for people going as far as Asheville and those doing the Paddle Trail, a series of campsites along the 140 miles of river from Rosman to the Tennessee line.

“We’ve seen interest in the Paddle Trail really grow, people will come and use it one, two nights, up to a week,” Whitmire said.

Headwaters holds an Upper French Broad Cleanup every year – coming up May 18. She said they are no longer seeing the old cars and refrigerators as in the past couple of decades, but are seeing more plastic bags and water bottles.

However, Whitmire said, their biggest safety concern for customers is not water quality or floating trash, but high water, fallen trees that cause log jams, and people becoming too complacent and not wearing their life jackets.

Last year in Western North Carolina there were six deaths of people kayaking and tubing on area rivers.

RELATED: Expert kayaker drowns on Cheoah River

Upcoming water quality concerns

Could all the work by the state and other groups on behalf of the Clean Water Act soon be washing down the drain?

Dozens of conservation groups, as well as the N.C. DEQ say “yes.”

In January the Environmental Protection Agency proposed to change wording in the Clean Water Act that conservation groups say would dramatically decrease water quality in rivers, streams and wetlands across the country, including to the French Broad River and its watershed.

The proposal, which closed to public comment April 15, is a new definition for “Waters of the United States,” which are essentially all surface waters that are protected under the 1972 Clean Water Act.

RELATED:EPA public comment on changes to Clean Water Act ends April 15

The proposed rule would strip away protection from smallest streams, the ephemeral ones that flow after a rainfall, as well as take away protection for wetlands, said Gisler, of the Southern Environmental Law Center, which filed a comment April 15 on behalf of 80 conservation groups.

“The basic premise of law is we need to stop pollution at its source. Once it gets in our waterways, it’s too difficult to clean,” Gisler said. “This proposal flips that on its head and says, we’ll figure it out when it gets downstream.”

He said the proposal would lead to increased downstream flooding risk, make water dirtier and degrade fish habitat, will result in higher treatment costs for drinking water providers, and make it harder and more expensive to restore them.

The DEQ also issued a 22-page comment April 15 in opposition to the proposed rule, saying in part, “The proposed rule removes federal protections from broad categories of essential wetland and stream features on the basis of arbitrary distinctions that have little to do with science or ensuring clean water.”

For now, most government, river watchdog groups and outfitters believe the French Broad is fishable and swimmable, except of course in the event of a closure due to pollution event, and everyone should take advantage of this natural resource flowing through town.

“In looking at the French Broad River overall, it’s important to note how much the water quality has improved beginning with the Clean Water Act in 1972,” Davidson said.

Endangered species such as the eastern hellbender, a giant aquatic salamander, and Appalachian elktoe, a tiny fresh water mussel, are starting to appear once again in French Broad tributaries.

RELATED: Eastern hellbenders lose bid for federal Endangered Species protection

Moving forward, however, Davidson said it’s important for all residents to realize their role in protecting water quality in the French Broad River basin.

“Controlling runoff, limiting fertilizer applications, managing chemical disposal responsibly, enhancing erosion controls, reducing stormwater pollutant runoff, supporting wastewater infrastructure repair … are important measures in addition to reporting pollution sources to the proper agencies,” he said.

“Understanding the watershed and engaging with local water quality related programs are also key to ensuring protection of the French Broad River.”

When to swim?

The French Broad Riverkeeper will launch weekly water quality updates May 1-September at Swimguide.org.

Also check with local health departments on swim advisories.

See something? Smell something?

To report an environmental emergency, call the N.C. DEQ at 800-858-0368 or call a staff person in the Asheville Regional Office at 828-296-4500.