Asheville approves $994,849 North Fork Dam repair for water security

Asheville approved a $994,849 contract to rebuild the North Fork Dam fusegate that tipped during Hurricane Helene, moving a storm repair from emergency response toward a more permanent fix for the city’s water supply. The work will be done by Morgan Corporation at the auxiliary spillway serving the North Fork Water Treatment Plant, where city staff said the system helped protect the earthen dam when the storm hit.

City officials said the spillway and fusegate system functioned as designed during Helene, taking pressure off the dam at a moment when failure could have meant catastrophic damage between North Fork and Biltmore Village. They said the stakes were not limited to infrastructure on the hillside above Asheville. Roughly 80% of the city’s drinking-water supply depended on the reservoir, making the damaged fusegate a direct concern for households, businesses and public services across Asheville and parts of Buncombe County.

The North Fork auxiliary spillway uses eight fusegates that are designed to tip in sequence as water levels rise. Replacing the damaged gate is not cosmetic work. It is part of restoring the reservoir to full operating capacity and to the level city water staff say is needed to handle both extreme weather and present-day drought conditions. Officials said North Fork needed to reach about 27 million gallons per day of treated water to fully pressurize and flush the system after Helene.

The repair also builds on the larger North Fork Dam Improvement Project, which was completed in 2021 after more than three years of construction. That project added spillway capacity, reinforced the earthen dams for seismic stability and improved monitoring equipment. Asheville officials have described the North Fork spillway as perhaps the single most important project in the city’s water-system history, and the work later won Rehabilitation Project of the Year from the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.

North Fork is a 355-acre reservoir and the largest of Asheville’s three water plants, serving about 80% of the city’s customers. After Helene, city officials said the spillway and fusegate preserved 80% of Asheville’s drinking-water supply and helped prevent catastrophic flooding and even greater loss of life and property. The March 2026 funding package for the repair added more than $5 million in FEMA money and another $500,000 from the state.

For Asheville, the contract is another step in turning a damaged water system into one that can better withstand the next violent storm.