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. And along the iconic French Broad River, known for its whitewater rapids, one item stands out among the rest: massive numbers of PVC pipes that washed away from a factory north of Asheville.“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