PVC pipes swept away by Hurricane Helene flooding still dominate cleanup of North Carolina river

WOODFIN, N.C. (AP) — They're piled on river banks, lodged in uprooted trees, embedded in sediment and jammed under logs. Many are tangled in mounds of debris up to two stories high.

Two years after Hurricane Helene leveled forests, bulldozed houses and filled western North Carolina rivers with everything from cars to refrigerators, the work of cleaning up the debris goes on. Along the iconic French Broad River, known for its whitewater rapids, one item stands out from the rest: massive numbers of PVC pipes that washed away from a factory north of Asheville. As Hurricane Isaias, the first hurricane of the Atlantic season, intensifies, the PVC pipes are a reminder that damage can disrupt lives for years after a storm passes.

“Just the amount of time and energy that we put into removing all this pipe is exhausting,” said Jon Stamper, operations director at MountainTrue, the nonprofit conducting cleanup on several rivers affected by Helene. “We still have stretches of river that haven’t been touched.”

MountainTrue estimates its crews have pulled hundreds of thousands of pipes from the river — most of which went to landfills — with an untold number still littering the river for 70 miles (113 kilometers) to a large lake at the Tennessee border.

Canada-based IPEX would not say how many pipes were stored at its Woodfin, North Carolina, site before the storm or share results of a company-funded study of how much remains in the river, calling the information “commercially sensitive.” Officials said 60% of pipes stored outdoors at the site, sandwiched between railroad tracks and the river, were swept away by the 2024 flood, but most were recovered fairly quickly.

The company acknowledged that the remaining debris is significant and has agreed to pay MountainTrue $500,000 toward continued cleanup on the French Broad, allowing the organization to continue working into next year.

A $10 million state grant awarded to MountainTrue in 2025 to clean up debris in several western North Carolina rivers that was set to expire in December has been extended to February. The organization said there’s still a long way to go and estimates it has spent 50,000 work-hours and over $1.5 million on pipe removal, which is only in the French Broad.

PVC pipe comprises 80% of the debris in some areas, according to MountainTrue, posing risks to rafters and kayakers, changing water flow and altering the ecosystem.

“We understand the ongoing challenge,” IPEX CEO Colleen Pritchett said. “We recognize that … recovery efforts are complex, they’re resource-intensive, and it’s constantly shaped by the river conditions.”

Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina in late September 2024, dumping more than 30 inches (76 centimeters) of rain in some areas, triggering landslides, toppling trees, pushing buildings off their foundations and choking waterways.

At IPEX, an earthen berm was the only thing separating tall stacks of pipes from the French Broad River. Company officials said they expected a so-called 100-year flood — meaning it has a 1% chance of occurring in any given year — and moved pipes out of that flood zone.

But the flooding from Helene was 10 times worse.

“We secured the site as best we could, and we sent people home a day before the flooding was expected,” said Johnny Drummond, vice president of manufacturing. He said the company did not anticipate a 1,000-year flood, which has a 1-in-1,000 chance of occurring.

The company closed the factory for a couple of months afterward, with losses “well over $100 million,” Pritchett said. It has since invested over $100 million to repair and strengthen the buildings, and now is studying ways to contain the pipes in future floods — something MountainTrue publicly urged for months.

Though there's much more than IPEX debris still in the waterways, the pipes are so ubiquitous that “there are places where you go that it makes up almost everything that we remove,” said Stamper, who formerly worked for a whitewater river outfitter and now oversees 10 cleanup crews totaling about 100 people — many of them former river or fishing guides who lost their livelihoods after the hurricane.

Removing the pipe is especially vexing because it binds with other debris and has become embedded in the river bottom, with fish and other creatures taking up residence inside. Stamper said he also worries about long-term environmental and health effects from the pipe, which can degrade and become brittle, leaving microplastics in the river.

“We want to avoid that stuff sitting there forever and just slowly deteriorating and breaking into smaller and smaller pieces,” Stamper said. “Some of the pipe that’s been sitting out since Hurricane Helene that has been exposed to the sun all the time is getting to the point where you could crack it when you grab it.”

Some of the pipes — both straight, rigid plastic and flexible coils that have unraveled — are under huge piles of tangled logs topped by other debris, often in mounds 20 feet (6 meters) high. Cleanup crews “just sort of picture it as a jungle gym” that they must climb and balance on as they clear the pile, said Jemima Filiss-Cook, who leads the cleanup in Madison County, where most of the pipe is concentrated.

She said many crew members were already cleaning up the river before MountainTrue hired them, as a way of “trauma bonding” over what had happened.

They include avid outdoorspeople, including rock climbers, because the cleanup is “quite a tedious and technical process” that requires comfort with the job’s rigors, said Anna Alsobrook, MountainTrue’s French Broad Riverkeeper.

Crews saw longer pipes into smaller chunks and load them on a boat, which is taken downstream to a landing spot and loaded onto a truck. Almost all of the pipes go to a landfill, though some in good condition are given to community members because there are no good recycling options, MountainTrue said.

“I truly don’t think anybody else could do this work except for our debris team members,” Alsobrook said, noting they must be able to navigate whitewater rapids with a boat full of pipes and saws.

The first priority was removing pipes that could pose an immediate danger or entrapment hazard to tubers or kayakers, and much of the remaining debris stranded in flood plains and on banks, especially around riverbends and corners, and vulnerable to being washed away in another flood, Stamper said.

It becomes apparent many pipes are still in the river whenever water levels change, he said.

MountainTrue is applying for other grants to help extend its program after state and IPEX funding run out, Stamper said, because it could take years to remove all the debris.

“We're going to do our best as long as the funding allows,” he said. “But there's going to be pipe out there that we can't get ever.”

Webber reported from Fenton, Michigan.

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Workers from MountainTrue clear IPEX PVC pipe from the riverbank Wednesday, July 22, 2026, in Alexander, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Workers from MountainTrue clear IPEX PVC pipe from the riverbank Wednesday, July 22, 2026, in Alexander, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Workers from MountainTrue clear IPEX PVC pipe from the riverbank Wednesday, July 22, 2026, in Alexander, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Workers from MountainTrue clear IPEX PVC pipe from the riverbank Wednesday, July 22, 2026, in Alexander, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Workers from MountainTrue clear IPEX PVC pipe from the riverbank Wednesday, July 22, 2026, in Alexander, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

A worker from MountainTrue cuts IPEX PVC pipe taken from the riverbank so that it can fit in the truck Wednesday, July 22, 2026, in Alexander, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

A worker from Mountain True paddles past Ipex PVC pipe from the riverbank Wednesday, July 22, 2026, in Alexander, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

IPEX PVC pipe is visible at the Buncombe County Landfill, Thursday, September 24, 2026, in Alexander, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

A worker from MountainTrue brings IPEX PVC pipe to the Buncombe County Landfill, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026, in Alexander, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

PVC pipe is transported on a truck from the IPEX factory that makes the pipe Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026, in Woodfin, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

PVC pipe is stuck along the banks of the French Broad River directly on the riverbank in front of the IPEX factory that makes the pipe Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026, in Woodfin, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

PVC pipe is stuck in the mud and in the French Broad River directly on the riverbank in front of the IPEX factory that makes the pipes Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026, in Woodfin, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

PVC pipe is stacked at the IPEX factory that makes the pipes Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026, in Woodfin, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Construction work is done on the outside of the IPEX factory that makes PVC pipes Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026, in Woodfin, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

PVC pipe is stacked at the IPEX factory as visible from the French Broad River, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026, in Woodfin, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Workers from MountainTrue paddle IPEX PVC pipe they collected from the riverbank Wednesday, July 22, 2026, in Alexander, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Workers from MountainTrue clear IPEX PVC pipe from the riverbank Wednesday, July 22, 2026, in Alexander, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Workers from MountainTrue paddle IPEX PVC pipe they collected from the riverbank Wednesday, July 22, 2026, in Alexander, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

IPEX PVC pipe cleared from the riverbank is dumped at MountainTrue headquarters Wednesday, July 22, 2026, in Alexander, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's administration is suspending tech giant Microsoft from a program to apply for green cards for workers who come to the U.S. to live and work using H-1B visas as it accuses the company of fraud.

Supporters of the Republican president have long argued that various programs like the one Vice President JD Vance accused Microsoft of abusing essentially empower American companies to recruit foreign workers for jobs that end up undercutting Americans. In a wide-ranging announcement Thursday, Vance and other top administration officials also called out universities over their use of J-1 visas for international students and IT outsourcing firms.

The announcement came hours before Trump was scheduled to award the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, part of an event at which he is granting some of the nation’s most prestigious science and technology awards to his tech billionaire allies.

Vance said that the program from which Microsoft is being suspended requires companies to advertise jobs in America before applying to the Department of Labor to show they need to give a foreign worker a green card because of a lack of American workers.

“They’ll put an advertisement in a small-town newspaper. They’ll go out there and say that ‘We have advertised for a position with our company, and nobody is responding to it.’ And they will use that lack of response to then go and replace American workers with what is effectively foreign indentured servants," Vance said. “There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has used this system more than Microsoft."

Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Washington, near Seattle, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Vance said Microsoft last year laid off 6,000 American workers but also obtained 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards.

“If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,” Vance said in a White House news conference announcing the decision. "Our message to Microsoft is: You’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers."

Vance said H-1B workers are effectively foreign indentured servants because if they lose their job, they have to leave the country, and they earn less than Americans in the same position.

The H-1B program has long been a target of Trump supporters who say that the program undercuts American workers and is rife with abuse.

H-1B visas are meant for high-skilled jobs that are difficult to find American workers to fill. Technology companies are the biggest users, with nearly three-quarters of approvals going to workers from India.

The Vance announcement came a day after Trump's administration launched another broadside against international students and their ability to work in the U.S.

The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday proposed a $70,000 fee for international students seeking to work in the United States. The proposed rule would require schools to pay the fee for every student who participates in the Optional Practical Training program, known as OPT, which allows students to work in jobs related to their major during or after their time in school.

Vance also called out universities that he suggested were abusing a program to allow international students to come to the U.S. These temporary visas, called J-1 visas, allow international visitors to temporarily come to the U.S. for work and study exchange programs. Vance singled out nine universities that he said merited further investigation for J-1 visa fraud, saying they used the program in greater proportions than their counterparts.

Vice President JD Vance speaks during a news conference on the Fraud Task Force inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Tom Brenner)

Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, listens as Vice President JD Vance speaks during a news conference on the Fraud Task Force inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Tom Brenner)

Vice President JD Vance speaks during a news conference on the Fraud Task Force inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Tom Brenner)