Heavy rains cause sewage overflow into French Broad River

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — April’s heavy rains caused a sewer line running through Asheville’s Biltmore Estate to overflow into the French Broad River.

The Asheville Citizen-Times reports (http://avlne.ws/2qxmqeE) a public announcement mandated by state law says the public line expelled 25,130 gallons of rainwater and untreated sewage over an 18-hour period beginning April 24.

Ken Stines, the system services maintenance director for the Buncombe County Metropolitan Sewerage District, says the discharge was mostly rainwater and thus didn’t add measurably to the bacteria count in the flooding French Broad.

Environmental nonprofit MountainTrue’s French Broad “Riverkeeper” Hartwell Carson says that assessment is mostly true, but sewage in the river is “never a good thing.”

Stines says MSD workers are finishing the first year of a three-year process to line the 21,000-foot pipe.

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Information from: The Asheville Citizen-Times, http://www.citizen-times.com