Pigeon

American Whitewater staff attended a site visit with NCDOT and partners to learn more about the reconstruction of I-40 and the ultimate restoration of the Pigeon River. NCDOT removed essentially all of the small rocks from the riverbed, much of which came from beneath I-40 and had filled the lower half of the run with 10-13 feet of rock. Then, they built a huge 2-way haul road \*in the riverbed\* to facilitate their efforts to rebuilt I-40 from below. They are mostly done with the haul road but there may be more built near the tunnel. Now the building process for I-40 will occur until fall of 2028. Subsequently, likely 2029 or even 2030, NCDOT will begin removing the haul road, attempting to leave as much of the native riverbed in and large rocks as possible. They will do so in stages, and have qualified recreational engineers engaged, with the goal of leaving a geomorphological and recreationally viable channel that offers good aquatic habitat. American Whitewater and our partners advocated for these steps, and have suggested that flows may need to be released to assure the channel functions as intended. What we saw on-site was a river severely impacted by both the removal of rock and then the filling in of the channel with rock to make the road. Before this work the upper half of the Dries was in good shape post-Helene but the lower half was filled in with 10-13 feet of road rock and needed restored by rock-removal. Now the whole channel is stripped of small rocks on the left side of the river, and filled with the road on the right half to 3/4 of the channel. The future of the dries will be created when NCDOT removes their road and seeks to restore the river on their way out of the project.