Leo Sharp, 38, and Tessa Reed, 29, have lived as homesteaders along the Nolichucky River in Green Mountain, N.C., for three years. They're slowly rebuilding their home and livelihood a year after Hurricane Helene. (Photo by Galen Bacharier/NC Newsline)
This is one of multiple stories published by NC Newsline around the first anniversary of Hurricane Helene, documenting communities recovering in western North Carolina. Read the first story here.
GREEN MOUNTAIN — A few ounces of Helene’s floodwaters remain trapped in the headlight of Leo Sharp’s Harley-Davidson.
When the Nolichucky River surged, it swallowed the bike, flooded the tool shed and ripped away the vegetation. Water rushing down the mountain left everything caked in mud, the barn barely standing and half of the home destroyed.
The year since has brought a new roof; a reinforced shed; the skeleton of a new bedroom. Sharp and Tessa Reed, who call the riverside property home, still sleep most nights in a tent pitched on wooden scaffolding across the property.
Estimated repair costs were far beyond their own means. The couple didn’t have flood insurance, and have yet to receive aid from FEMA. Help has come in fits and spurts, from neighbors, friends and church groups. At first, they had hoped to have the home repaired by July 2025. Now, the timeline is indefinite.
“It’s hard to get any one thing done when everyone is pulling you in different directions,” Reed said, standing in the echoey, wrapped shell of a room. A rolled-up carpet and cardboard are stuffed in a clawfoot bathtub.
They don’t plan to leave or sell. Nor do their neighbors. They’ll stay and rebuild, they’ve decided, even if it’s with their own hands.
“In the moment, it was like, what are we going to do?” Sharp said. “Then afterward, you’re just saying, ‘thank God I have you.’ Thank God for everything we do have. Everything else just kind of becomes unimportant. It’s been a hell of an onion to peel.”
A year after the storm, the Nolichucky riverbank in front of Sharp and Reed's property is mostly rebuilt, and plants grow again. (Photo by Galen Bacharier/NC Newsline)
The Nolichucky River was unrecognizable when the flooding subsided. An island in front of the couple’s home looked more like a landfill: toppled trees, scraps of metal from cars and homes. (Photo by Galen Bacharier/NC Newsline)
The view down the railroad tracks and the Nolichucky River from Leo Sharp and Tessa Reed's property near Green Mountain, North Carolina. (Photo by Galen Bacharier/NC Newsline)
The mine
In recent months, Sharp and Reed noticed work vehicles and excavators constantly coming down the railroad tracks. A neighbor’s Facebook posts shed light on why: a 50-acre mining operation along the Nolichucky in Mitchell County to supply CSX the materials it needed to stabilize a railroad bed.
For those living nearby, the noise was deafening and constant — sometimes going into the early morning hours.
But for Sharp and Reed, it was the air quality that was the most apparent: clouds of dust descending on their home. Reed has systemic lupus, and had started to notice more persistent flares. And Sharp had recently had a cancer scare.
“It gets in the house, it gets in your car, it gets in everything,” Reed said.
Sharp, a licensed drone pilot, captured overhead footage of the active mine. When the Department of Labor learned that the operation was being done without a permit and a judge shut it down days later, his photographs and video accompanied the story across TV stations.
NCDEQ has denied the mining permit application from Horizon 30 LLC. Mitchell County residents voiced concerns about environmental damage caused by unpermitted mining along Nolichucky River. (Drone shots courtesy of Leo Sharp)It was, it seemed, another test for a region already exhausted by hurricane recovery.
“Out here after Helene, there were so many people that dipped their fingers into the area,” Reed said. “It’s just fishy … opportunistic.”
In late August, the company’s application for a permit was denied by the Department of Environmental Quality.
“Taking advantage of our area was not the right move,” Sharp said. “It did a lot of people harm, so we fought it. Even though we’ve only lived here a few years… we fought for it to get shut down. This is where we call home.”
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