What do Dominion, MountainTrue, West Asheville farmer have in common? Saving Hominy Creek

ASHEVILLE - West Asheville produce farmer Steve Beltram owns 34 acres that is home to an endangered section of Hominy Creek, one of the French Broad's big tributaries in West Asheville.

Especially after Tropical Storm Fred's rampage in August 2021, about a mile of creek on Beltram's property needs a lot of work.

“Over the years, there’s a lot of bank erosion going on,” he said. “And then last year during Tropical Storm Fred, a big section of the bank blew out.”

Coincidentally, Dominion Energy has a relatively new natural gas pipeline along the creek, and it has been impacted not only by Tropical Storm Fred but ongoing rain ever since.

Related: Blue Ridge Parkway: Natural gas pipeline proposal in Asheville up for public comment

Then there is local conservation group MountianTrue that has been talking to Beltram for “a couple years” about doing a significant streambank restoration project.

Beltram said he’s not sure how this work may impact his farm, where he grows organic vegetables like tomatoes, lettuce and eggplant.

“One of the things that motivates us to farm that way is caring for the earth,” Beltram said, noting he already leaves buffers of trees and undergrowth between the farmland and the creek. “This is just going to accentuate the things that we’re already trying to do and hopefully make it be even more effective in taking care of the waterways and growing good, healthy food at the same time.”

Beltram said he bought the property in 2014 when people were leasing it to grow tomatoes. The property, once part of a large dairy operation, is now flanked by rapid residential development, he said. “This is one of the last pieces of open space and farmland in this part of the county."

Part of that development is Dominion, which serves many customers in Buncombe. But with the pipeline threatened by erosion, environmental and sustainability are at the forefront of its concerns in West Asheville.

Dominion spokesperson Persida Montantez said the company this fall will work with a third-party contractor to address erosion up to 600 feet off the streambank.

It will also pull debris from the waterway in an attempt to clean the waterway, decrease turbidity, protect its pipeline and protect the creek for the long term, all in one fell swoop.

To do all that, Dominion is working with landowner Beltram and conservation group MountainTrue.

“We’ve kind of been working that stretch of the creek for several years,” MountainTrue Watershed Outreach Coordinator Anna Alsobrook said. "We’ve been planting live stakes in order to shore up the riverbank there.”

Live stakes are portions of trees that can be cut and planted in the ground to halt erosion.

“This particular stretch is pretty severely eroded,” Alsobrook said.

At the same time Dominion is showing interest in funding erosion control on the bank to protect its pipeline, MountainTrue has applied for a $500,000 grant from the North Carolina Land and Water Fund to work on that streambank restoration project on Beltram’s land.

“I have paddled Hominy Creek several times, and you can just see chunks of dirt falling off the wall into the river,” Alsobrook said. “It’s like looking at a melting iceberg sometimes. So to not do anything, to not fix this area means huge amounts of sediment will run into Hominy Creek and then the French Broad River.”

More: Before tubing the French Broad River in Asheville, find out how much E.coli is in water

Though the river isn’t enormously popular with anglers or paddleboarders, according to Alsobrook, it can be used for both those recreations. It's in Asheville, is adjacent to walking trails, and it feels like being in the forested wilderness, she said.

“It’s important to take care of because it drains right above the French Broad in the River Arts District,” she added, noting that area is used by thousands each year. “We want Hominy to be clean for Hominy’s sake, but there’s this other really popular stretch of the French Broad, so we need to keep that section really clean.”

Montanez would not say how much money Dominion is investing in the restoration work.

The company met with Beltram and MountainTrue recently and "talked about shared commitment to the stabilization work," she said. "We're going to create consistency with each other's work, share lessons learned and best practices, all of those things to ensure that this erosion doesn't continue happening."

The work won't impact any roadways, she said.

There is at least one more entity concerned about Hominy: Buncombe County.

In a recent budget presentation to the Board of Commissioners, the Agriculture and Land Resources department announced it would be using about $3 million in federal dollars for to restore waterways impacted by Tropical Storm Fred. The money primarily will be spent on debris cleanup and bank improvement.

The county has 44 projects in the work right now.

"I believe we have 5 projects in Hominy Creek and 4 in South Hominy," Ag and Land Director Jennifer Harrison said.

More: Buncombe got $3 million for Tropical Storm Fred recovery; here's how it will be spent

Andrew Jones is Buncombe County government and health care reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at @arjonesreports on Facebook and Twitter, 828-226-6203 or arjones@citizentimes.com. Please help support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Dominion Energy, Mountain True partnering to preserve Hominy Creek