With Asheville’s nonpotable water restored, Flush AVL shifts focus to struggling small towns

North Asheville’s Elle DeBruhl works in recruiting for multinational accounting giant Ernst & Young. She is not in any way an expert on water distribution.

But after Tropical Storm Helene left Asheville without running water, DeBruhl and her husband, Buddy DeBruhl, came up with a plan to provide a way for people to get nonpotable flushing water. The couple had access to intermediate bulk containers (IBC) totes — industrial-grade containers for the mass handling, transport and storage of liquids  — at Buddy’s family farm near Weaverville.

“We outfitted our own rig [a flatbed trailer hitched to a pickup truck] with six of these totes and started pulling water from wells and ponds at the farm and bringing it into the more vulnerable populations that did not have access to gray flushing water,” Elle DeBruhl explains. “We just knew that the people were not in a good position to help themselves, so we needed to help.”

Within days, the DeBruhls’ fledgling operation had grown into Flush AVL with the help of co-founder Molly Black, an executive with the American Cancer Society, and a team of dedicated volunteers. In partnership with Highland Brewing, BeLoved Asheville and Plenty.org, Flush AVL distributed 400 totes around town and kept them supplied with nonpotable water.

Now that running water has been restored to Asheville, the group is changing its focus to bring flushing water to smaller communities that were devastated by Helene. “We’re on Operation Redeploy, and that’s just as fulfilling as the original project,” she says.

Elle DeBruhl spoke with Xpress about the origins of Flush AVL, its rapid growth, its new mission and what might be next for the group’s organizers.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Xpress: How did the program grow so fast after your initial efforts?

Shortly after we started doing this, the bucket brigades started following us around, using our water and helping some of these low-income housing units, veterans homes, nursing homes, individuals that can’t carry a 5-gallon bucket. In a matter of about two days, I was able to leverage my connections to get a large sum of these IBC totes donated. Lots of corporate sponsorships. [Former NASCAR star] Dale Earnhardt Jr. gave quite a large sum of containers.

How did you connect with Molly Black, your co-founder?

Molly knows Drew Reisinger, the Buncombe County register of deeds. My husband works in the Register of Deeds office. So Drew’s like, “Hey Molly, you need to meet Elle, because her and Buddy are doing this great work,” and that’s how we met. She’s working on her doctorate in public health, so she recognized the impact that not having flushing water would have on the public if it wasn’t done as quickly as possible.

She works for the American Cancer Society, and she got some really smart people there to build us a GIS [geographic information system] map. Using this very smart GIS map, we started to build an infrastructure around the city in strategic  places that we knew needed to get these totes on the ground. Communities like Livingston Street, Erskine Street, Deaverview, Maplecrest Apartments.

Can you explain the logistics of the program?

We set up this large volunteer drive of people who had equipment and trucks to transport the totes. We staged them at Highland Brewing. We would tell them [the volunteers] where to go to drop the totes and we would mark it on the map. We just continued to do that and really expand our efforts to where we had 400 totes around the city. [People in the community] could just scan a QR code, and it notified us in dispatch that your tote needed to be refilled. We would  send out a volunteer to fill that tote. We outfitted them with hoses and different things so that they would be able to pump water from their trucks. We just worked like that around the clock.

We had upwards of 30 volunteers and a core set of six people. We had somebody that was in charge of the map. We had somebody in charge of dispatch. We had somebody in charge of water fill. We’re so proud of the fact that this is truly community built. We did meet with the City of Asheville and other leaders in the community, and there just wasn’t the  infrastructure and manpower to help with this. So we knew we had to do it.

Now that nonpotable water is back on in Asheville, what is the plan for AVL Flush?

We realized very quickly that we’ve got all these totes on the ground, and our friends in Swannanoa, in Old Fort, in Burnsville, in Marshall, in Hot Springs, in Spruce Pine, in Barnardsville, are going to be without water for a very long time. So that’s where we’re now redeploying all of our totes that we’ve laid down. We’re just basically working the map in reverse. We know where the totes are, so we’re using volunteers to gather them up. And my husband and I, we have a central drop site where we’re having our volunteers bring the totes. And then we are taking those totes and driving them into those communities. 

How have your efforts in those communities been going?

It’s not as easy as going, “Here’s some totes,” and walking out. You really have to make inroads with someone local. They are proud people, and they don’t want help. For example, we go to Marshall, and I think, “If I need to speak with someone in charge, I’m going to go to the fire department.” And I go to the fire department, and there is no fire department. That building is gone. So it takes me about 30 minutes to network my way through my phone and get to someone that’s in charge of their operations. And they didn’t believe me. They were like, “What do you mean you’re just gonna give us totes? What’s the catch?” I’m like, “There’s not a catch. We don’t need them anymore, and you guys need them.” And we’re just doing that with all of these communities in Western North Carolina.

How will the totes in those communities be filled with water?

If we can get them the totes, they are scrappy enough to figure out how to fill them. We are donating all of our pumps and things to help. For example, we delivered quite a few totes [to Hot Springs], and we left them with one of our pumps. We showed a couple key community members how to use those. And we gave them some pointers on how to manage the totes and keep them full, but we don’t have the infrastructure to go and fill them. And if they need more, they can keep reaching out to us and we will get them more totes.

Have you given any thought to keeping Flush AVL going after all these communities have access to water again?

I work for Ernst & Young. I am in a global recruiting role in a corporate job. I’m not a specialist in any type of water distribution, but I have just used  my skills of knowing how to build teams and working projects and getting things turned around as quickly as possible. And that is very fulfilling. Molly, my co-founder, I did not know her, and now we’re forced by circumstance to meet and build something so important. And so you do wonder, “Should we think about something else when this is all over?” Who knows the answer to that?

But what I will say is that the devastation that I have seen in these communities, they’re going to need these totes for a very long time. And I can’t sleep knowing that we have them sitting on the street, not being utilized, and it could truly save lives in these other impacted areas.