ALLEN G. BREED and BRITTANY PETERSON.

It’s been only a year since Hurricane Helene hammered the southeast U.S. from Florida to the Carolinas. Some of the heaviest damage came from flooding in the North Carolina mountains, where some 30 inches of rain turned gentle streams into walls of water that swept away anything in their path. The worst wreckage has been cleared away, but cleanup crews are still at work plucking smaller debris from waterways throughout the region. In the understandable haste to rescue people and restore their lives to some semblance of normalcy, some fear the recovery efforts compounded Helene’s impact on the ecosystem. Contractors hired to remove vehicles, shipping containers, shattered houses and other large debris from waterways sometimes damaged sensitive habitat.