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Ask Matt … what happens to mountains of debris left by Helene

Woodchips are stacked high at a FEMA-approved site next to Mills River Town Hall.

By MATT MATTESON, Published: March 7, 2025

Q. How much wood debris has been collected in Henderson County and what will they do with those piles of mulch you see on N.C. 191? Can it be burned for fuel?

 Some may call it Mt. Mulchmore, but if you looked closely at a pile of chipped storm debris you would find pieces of wood that range from the size of a string bean to that of a zucchini – not your garden variety mulch. I prefer the term “wood chips.” The debris – logs, tree branches, and stumps – are being picked up by Southern Disaster Recovery (SDR), a Greer, S.C., company the county hired within days of Helene’s departure. You may have been stopped waiting for an excavator to pack debris into an unmarked black truck bound for one of three working collection sites around the county. 

The tree counters

 The estimated amount of total debris in Henderson County, according to County Engineer Marcus Jones, is 6.0 million cubic yards which includes debris from roadside, private property and waterways. Jones added that the collection job is about 30 percent complete but admits that that is a broad estimates.

 One thing that is not an estimate is how it is tallied. Debris Tech, a third-party contractor, measures the debris in each truck as it enters an SDR site. “This is FEMA on the ground,” said Jones, meaning that accurate counts ensure that what the county pays SDR will be reimbursed by FEMA. Estimators use mechanical lifts to get above the open trucks and tally the cubic yards of debris. The contractor has a state-approved fee schedule with 26 different rates for hauling, grinding, and other services. Debris Tech validates each SDR invoice.

 There is a lot of movement inside the gates of a debris-grinding site. Yellow excavators lift the tangled debris into a side-loading chipper. In Mills River this would be an Astec Peterson Model 5710. Boasting a 60-inch hopper, the business end of this big boy can handle about any size log. The production specs say it can grind up and spit out 500 cubic yards of waste per hour. Jones says this process reduces the raw debris to about a quarter of its volume. Even under perfect conditions, factoring in downtime and work hours, I guessed that it will take the Astec 22.5 weeks to chip all of the county’s roadside debris. And let’s not forget, this is just a fraction of the potential wood waste in the county. Other FEMA programs cover private property debris removal and cleanup of waterways. (The county has identified 121 cleanup sites on rivers and creeks.)

No takers for biofuel

 I pitched the wood-burning question to Don Nicholson, a research physicist at UNC-Asheville. Nicholson equated the estimated 1½  million cubic yards of debris, which is only the roadside debris portion, to a football field stacked 900 feet high — or three more football fields. The energy potential is staggering. “It could power about 15,000 homes for a year,” said Nicholson, who once worked at the Oak Ridge National Labs. “There are a lot of unit conversions involved so there is always the chance of error.”

 SDR has worked two recent tornado clean-up jobs, one in Georgia and one in Upstate South Carolina, and we learned from local officials that some of the debris was sold to a third party and burned for fuel. But we also know that Duke Energy does not operate any wood burning power plants and has no interest in our wood waste.

The piles of chips become the property of SDR; the company has not publicly disclosed (nor is it obligated to disclose) the end destination of the “final haul,” in storm debris parlance. It does however have to comply with environmental rules. “The end users have to have a demonstrated use for the material,” Jones said.

A controlled inferno

Perhaps the biggest stockpile of raw debris is on North Ridge Road in Edneyville. There is no big chipper or tub grinder there; it’s just a burn operation. The engineering term is “air curtain burner” and permits have been obtained to burn the pile down. Jones says the reduction ratio is 100:1 and sees no problem finding a home for the ash. Under perfect conditions some 2,700 cubic yards a day can be reduced to ash. If one third of the county’s roadside debris is stockpiled at the Edneyville site, I estimated it would be gone in six months.

 Kevin Waldrup, the interim fire chief of the Edneyville Fire Department, is county fire marshal in his day job. He said he had received no complaints.

“Now is the time to burn,” he said. “It’s green and there is no immediate fire danger. It will be worse when it dries out.” Jones said the county can shut down the operation for safety reasons.

 Not everyone is pleased with the burn. “Our house stinks of smoke,” said Jessica Greenhalge. She and her husband Austin own a three-bedroom home on North Ridge Road near the burn pit. “It’s worse when they pour diesel on the fire,” she said. “We can’t open the windows and there is a constant film of ash that covers our cars and our carpets are ruined from the soot our kids track in.”

At a meeting of the Board of Commissioners Monday night, Jones defended the air-curtain process as the only practical way to reduce the volume of wood.

“It is significantly cleaner than open burning,” he said. “I do feel we’re doing everything we can to minimize the impacts of our burning program. Mulching and hauling away woodchips, we’ve determined, could end up with the county buried in woodchips.”

A mile down the road from SDR’s burn operation is Epperson Tree Service, a 20-year-old company that recently acquired an air burner to incinerate excess wood. “This will be similar to the stump dump,” said owner Julie Epperson who, now with permits in hand, expects the new fee-based service to open this month.

Sadly, trees don’t fall in neat rows but if they did they could fetch a nice price. “We take our logs to Cold Creek Timber in Canton,” said Roy Erickson, of Roy’s Tree Service. That wholesale lumber yard is 35 miles from Hendersonville. Logs must be no less than a foot in diameter and eight feet long.

Debris cleanup ‘a very high priority’

Debris removal is a big topic at every meeting of county commissioners, who have been getting complaints from homeowners that debris piles are growing because people are dumping non-storm related trash on them.

“Getting this debris cleaned up is a very high priority. It has been from the beginning,” County Manager John Mitchell said last week. “I’m happy to see 30 percent but I feel very strongly the board’s will that this goes faster than it has. Where that’s in our power we will accomplish that.”

The county hosted a meeting Thursday to try to sign up more subcontractors.

“Heads up, if you looked into it before and it didn't work for you,” Jones said during a County Conversations podcast this week with Communications Director Mike Morgan. “The state has recently reevaluated its unit prices for the debris removal contract, and it realized that moving debris in mountainous terrain is significantly more involved than at the coast. The prices have gone up substantially in our ability to pay.”

Jones emphasized that the roadside program will continue until all the Helene debris is gone.

“If the property owner can get their debris into the roadside — keep it out of the travel way, keep it out of the ditches — we'll come by and pick it up at no charge,” he said. “They’re making multiple passes.”

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Editor Bill Moss contributed reporting. Got a question for AskMatt? Send it to askmattm@gmail.com.