The Nolichucky was healing from Helene. Then an illegal mine moved in.

If you’ve ever rafted the Nolichucky Gorge — felt the cold spray off its Class III rapids, watched hemlocks blur past as the current pulled you through one of the deepest gorges east of the Mississippi — you know why people call it world-class. The 115-mile river flowing from Western North Carolina into eastern Tennessee, crossing through the Pisgah and Cherokee national forests, has long been a bucket-list destination for Triangle paddlers willing to make the drive west.

Hurricane Helene nearly destroyed it. Now, as The News & Observer reports, an illegal mining operation is compounding the damage — and locals fear the river may never fully recover.

What Helene left behind

The storm dropped up to 2 feet of rain across mountainous Mitchell County in September 2024, sending record floodwaters tearing through the Nolichucky corridor. Water poured over the Nolichucky Dam at a rate twice the normal flow of Niagara Falls, according to researchers at East Tennessee State University. The force flattened mature trees, reshaped sections of the ancient gorge and took out roads, bridges and a 60-mile section of the CSX rail line that traverses it.

What had been a premier whitewater rafting destination became a treacherous obstacle course of trees and trash that volunteers are still picking clean 18 months later.

The river also provides habitat for rare and threatened wildlife including the cryptic Eastern Hellbender — a giant salamander that serves as a living barometer of water quality — and the endangered Appalachian Elktoe mussel. Both species depend on clean, free-flowing water and stable streambeds. It supplies drinking water for downstream communities and is a source of income for countless river guides and rafting and paddling outfitters.

A mine in the dark of night

Just as residents were beginning to believe their mountains might eventually recover, an unpermitted mining operation arrived in the rural Poplar community near the Nolichucky’s banks.

“They came in literally in the dark of night,” said Christy Thrift, who with her husband, Scott Thrift, runs N.C. Outdoor Adventures. The couple take tourists on adventuring, kayak, tubing and waterfall-rappelling trips through the woods and waterways of North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. A favorite is the stretch of the Nolichucky close to where the mine was dug.

The blasting started in late January or early February 2025. The operation, run by Horizon 30 LLC under the guise of digging stone and gravel to help the railroad rebuild, ripped an open pit into the east bank of the Nolichucky. It’s not clear whether stone from the mine was ever used to help repair the blown-out rail line, as the operators promised, or if the rock was sent somewhere else. Jonathan Stuckey, spokesman for CSX, said this week the railroad would not comment on whether it had received stone from Horizon 30.

Horizon 30 is listed as being based in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and in Raleigh. Brent Fernandes of Turlock, California, is listed on documents as its CEO and Sean Chipman of Allentown as chief financial officer. Neither the property owners — brothers Theodore and Bruce Carter of Candler — nor Fernandes or Chipman could be reached for comment on the mine’s operations.

Sediment islands and a poisoned river

When the rogue mine finally was forced to close last fall, inspectors say the restoration work on the site was woefully inadequate. Subsequent inspections by the state Department of Environmental Quality found the site had not been stabilized and that sediment, possibly containing toxic heavy metals commonly resulting from mining, was running into the Nolichucky River directly from the mine and through drainage pipes the company installed that emptied into the river.

The sediment had formed an island reaching nearly halfway across the river, inspectors said.

For anyone who has paddled or waded the Nolichucky, a sediment island choking off half the channel tells a grim story — about degraded habitat for hellbenders and mussels that need clean gravel substrates, about altered currents that could reshape rapids and about water quality that downstream communities and wildlife depend on.

Tessa and Leo Sharp, who live near the mine site, watched the damage unfold. The couple — both artists, he a disabled Navy vet — had moved to the Poplar community four years ago for its natural beauty.

“Helene really took out all of the foliage and the trees and everything in the landscape that was surrounding the river,” Tessa Sharp said. “The storm took all that away, and brought increased winds and higher chances of fire. And then the mine came in and kicked up all this dust that coated everything and got into the air that we breathed, and brought all the noise and stressed out the wildlife.”

“We used to have an active bald eagle nest right across the river from our house,” she said. “It’s been a complete change from what we knew.”

A year of defiance

In North Carolina, the DEQ’s Division of Energy, Mineral and Land Resources oversees mining operations under the Mining Act of 1971. The law requires mines or quarries to be permitted with a reclamation plan in place before the ground is broken.

The DEQ says neither the Carters nor Horizon 30 ever applied for a permit before operations began. The state Department of Labor discovered the mine was operating without one when federal officials asked the department to conduct safety training at the site.

What followed was a months-long standoff. DEQ first visited on Feb. 6, 2025, finding workers building roads and removing dirt over about 4 acres. The department told workers to stop. Mining continued.

In March, DEQ notified the operators they were violating the mining act. In April, Horizon 30 filed an incomplete permit application, and by the time the state visited later that month, the operation had grown to 10 acres. DEQ ordered a cease and desist. Mining continued.

Near the end of May 2025, DEQ found the operation had expanded further and again told operators to stop. At that point, Fernandes told inspectors he had been talking with department officials weekly and had told them to just “fine him the $5,000 a day” for continuing to operate without a permit.

In June, another stop order. Mining continued. The state filed a complaint in Mitchell County Superior Court in July. By August, inspectors found mining underway on as much as 30 acres of the 50-acre site.

On Aug. 11, the court issued a preliminary injunction. Two weeks later, the state denied the mining permit application because the mine had been out of compliance from the beginning.

Legal fight and a path to recovery

In February 2026, the Southern Environmental Law Center filed a notice of intent to sue the mine’s operators in 60 days under the federal Clean Water Act, with support from the nonprofits MountainTrue and the Center for Biological Diversity.

Jamie Whitlock, the Asheville-based lead attorney for the SELC, said the destruction was a betrayal of a place already devastated.

“They’re just a bad actor,” Whitlock said. “They came into his small community and really just ravished it after it had already been basically destroyed by Helene.”

Environmental groups say required reclamation work has not been done. If issues at the mine aren’t addressed, Whitlock said, the SELC likely will file suit in April. The lawsuit will seek a civil penalty of up to $68,445 per day for each violation, attorney’s fees and costs, as well as an injunction against continued violations.

DEQ directed Horizon 30 to install ground cover, repair slopes where gullies had formed and take other actions to stabilize the site and control sediment runoff. In December 2025, DEQ approved a modified reclamation plan — but whether it will be carried out remains an open question.

The Nolichucky has endured millions of years of geological upheaval. Whether it can endure this chapter depends on what happens next.

This story is available free to all readers thanks to financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and Green South Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.

This story was originally published April 19, 2026 at 6:45 AM with the headline "The Nolichucky was healing from Helene. Then an illegal mine moved in.."