Out and about in Asheville - Chapter something - The John B Lewis flood

What happened and things

Removing the silt pile

The John B Lewis soccer complex  (known to the soccer crowd as "JBL") is a couple of miles from here - something like 6 acres of soccer fields covered in astroturf along with the associated buildings, never quite enough parking space and so on.  About a year ago the Swannanoa River flooded it, dumping a fairly large amount of silt on it - I didn't realise how much until today.  The picture on the right shows a digger on top of about half the pile.

The fields were last laid in June 2017 at a cost of a million and a half or thereabouts after another flood so the local soccer association (ABYSA) was understandably reluctant to do the whole thing again.  

JBL was donated to ABYSA by the Lewis family about 20 years ago as a memorial to their soccer playing son.  It is in an area prone to flooding but does an immense service to the upmarket shopping area at Biltmore Village by grabbing a load of the water that would otherwise flood the shops there.

A week after the flood

JBL is also home to the most enormous adventure playground you have ever seen.  It got whacked by the flood, too - the structure mostly survived but the bone-saving mulch that covered the ground got washed away.  More about that later.

Cue inaction

OK - had the fields been immediately dealt with once the flood water receded, someone would have been stuck with a hefty clean-up bill - maybe $50,000.  Imagine vacuuming dirt up from 6 acres.  But ABYSA runs a tight budget and was still paying off the million and a bit from replacing the turf in 2017.  So they, not unreasonably, reminded the folks at Biltmore Village that they would have suffered a lot more than a bit of soggy carpet if JBL hadn't been there.  Pocketbooks apparently did not fly open.

Meanwhile, it rained at JBL - it does that in Asheville and 2018 did it in record quantities.  This meant that, as inaction continued, the silt got washed into the turf.  And the chances were that the silt had a lot more than just sand in it as the Swannanoa flows past farm land and residential areas with septic tanks.  So the necessary clean-up rapidly changed from one of sweeping up a load of silt to removing all the silt from the fields that has now washed deep into the shredded rubber that forms the base of fake turf.  And the only way to do that is to sweep and vacuum all the shredded rubber from the turf, along with the silt, and cart it away.  It is, so I hear, not economically viable to take it away, clean it up and then bring it back again.

Restoration under way

So now restoration has started - because of the extra work, the bill is closer to $800,000.  First, the overlying silt was removed (that's it in the first two pictures) and now the deeper silt is being sucked up along with the shredded rubber base.  That's just the beginning.  The turf is then pretty much vacuumed and groomed with rotating brushes.  And then the new rubber chips are spread on top and brushed in.

Finally the fields will need to be re-marked and the equipment (goals and benches) put back in place.  The benches weigh a ton and largely survived but the goals took a real beating.

Bags of rubber chips waiting to be laid

The folks at ABYSA are hoping it will all be done in the next month and I agree wholeheartedly as I referee soccer in Asheville and I would far rather be at JBL than at one of the parks further from home (we don't get paid travel expenses).

And what about the playground?

As you can see, the playground is in pretty good shape - some of the swings have been removed because they were too high off the ground with no mulch underneath and the spiral slide has been taken down but everything else is otherwise fine.  So the whole thing is being removed.  WOT?  This playground has been a mecca for Asheville kids for 15 years or more.  But it is partly made of - shock! horror! - wood!!!  Which is prohibited by current health and safety regulations in case the kids get splinters.  So it's got to go.  Whether it will be replaced and with what is up in the air as is what will happen to all the perfectly serviceable playground equipment, timber and compound decking.  (There's not enough of the compound material there to redo our deck or I'd sneak in late at night and nick it.)

So, welcome back, JBL (nearly) we've missed you

There are going to be many sighs of relief from parents, coaches, refs, players and administrators when we get JBL back.  I take my hat off to the people who have managed to run recreational and league soccer in Asheville without access to JBL for the last year and a bit but I, for one, will not miss field 8 at Buncombe County Sports Park (which I will say, without further elaboration, is much further from the toilet block than it is from the heavily wooded disc golf course).