A catfish wriggles out of the broken length of PVC pipe as Liz McGuirl wrestles the debris from the rocky bottom of the French Broad River. “Get it!” she cheered as it flops into the water and back toward the current. “He was living in there, but now he's going to be a lot happier.” It’s been just a year since floodwaters from the remnants of Hurricane Helene washed these pipes out of a nearby factory with such force that some pieces ended up in Douglas Lake, about 90 miles away in Tennessee. But they're already slick with algae and filled with river silt — and creatures. Helene killed more than 250 people and caused nearly $80 billion in damage from Florida to the Carolinas. In the North Carolina mountains, rains of up to 30 inches in some places turned gentle streams into walls of water that swept away trees, boulders, homes and vehicles, shattered century-old flood records, and in some places carved out new channels. The focus of the last year has been rescuing people, restoring their lives to a semblance of normalcy, repairing essential infrastructure, and removing large debris. Contractors were hired to remove vehicles, shipping containers, shattered houses and other large debris from waterways. “We came in after them, noticing they had kind of left a little bit more trash in their wake and we're coming in with that delicate touch leaving it better than we found it,” said Leslie Beninato, logistics manager with MountainTrue. MountainTrue, the nonprofit, received a $10 million, 18-month grant from the state to go in and do the painstaking work of pulling small debris from the rivers and streams. Since July, teams have removed more than 75 tons from about a dozen rivers across five watersheds. Many on the crew are rafting guides who were knocked out of work by the storm. They brace against the waist-high current as they unearth plastic pipe and other human-made detritus from the riverbed, which they pile onto their rafts, canoes and kayaks. The debris gets piled onto the bank and later hauled to a dump. Red-tailed hawks and osprey circle high overhead as the flotilla glides past banks lined with willow, sourwood and sycamore, ablaze with goldenrod and jewelweed. That peacefulness belies its fury of a year ago that upended so many lives. “After Helene hit and the rivers rose, there were so many people in the community that became afraid of the river. They became fearful and felt like the river had betrayed them,” said crew member Liz McGuirl, who managed a hair salon before Helene put her out of work. But the river is where McGuirl went for solace following her husband’s death four years ago. This is her way of paying it back. “I felt kind of like it was my responsibility to get out here and ... help heal the places and spaces that have healed me.”