MountainTrue presses Woodfin plastic maker to join river cleanup efforts

MountainTrue is putting the burden for French Broad River cleanup squarely on IPEX, saying the Woodfin plastic maker should do more to stop pipe from washing downstream and help answer for the debris already in the water. The nonprofit says about 80 percent of the material it has recovered came from IPEX sources, and close to half of what crews pull out below the plant is IPEX-branded PVC pipe.

That demand landed in public view May 12 at Riverside Rhapsody Beer Company in Asheville, directly across the street from IPEX’s plant at 900 Riverside Drive. MountainTrue used the meeting to push for accountability after months of cleanup work tied to Tropical Storm Helene, with French Broad Riverkeeper Anna Alsobrook saying IPEX needs to anchor its pipe better or move inventory before storms. Woodfin town manager Shannon Tuch put the responsibility on the company to store its pipes higher up.

The scale of the mess has made the dispute hard to ignore in Buncombe County and far beyond it. MountainTrue says it has hired 102 people to help remove pipe and debris from the river. Other local coverage has put the regional total at roughly 5 million pounds of debris removed, much of it plastic pipe. MountainTrue and other reports have also said roughly 40 percent of debris pulled from the French Broad from Woodfin to Douglas Lake, Tennessee has been IPEX product.

The cleanup is still chasing debris that has been in the river since Helene. Reports from late 2024 said thousands of 10-foot white PVC pipes were still lined along the French Broad after the storm, with some carried at least as far downstream as Hot Springs. That reach matters in western North Carolina because the French Broad is not a remote waterway; it runs through Asheville, Woodfin and the heart of a river corridor used for paddling, fishing and tourism.

MountainTrue says it has repeatedly tried to meet with IPEX, but the company has refused to discuss the problem. That leaves local governments and state regulators, including the Town of Woodfin and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, under pressure to keep the issue visible if the company does not act on its own.

For MountainTrue, the fight is about more than plastic. The group says river cleanup is tied to tourism, recreation, public health and the long recovery of the French Broad watershed, and it wants IPEX to help prevent the next flood from repeating the same damage.