Answer Man: Chemtrails or just contrails? (Really?) Did Asheville pay out $81,000 to settle discrimination complaint about Human Relations Commission?
Today’s round of questions, my smart-aleck replies and the real answers:
Question: I have a question for you. Frequently — several days a week for many months if not years — I see airplanes traversing the sky over Asheville, spraying chemicals in linear or criss/cross patterns. If it happens at night, we seem to wake up with a weird fog in the morning. If the spraying is in the day, we wind up with a weird gray overcast sky that blocks out the sunlight. What is this, and why are they doing it?
My answer: You know, a part of me knows I shouldn’t feed the chemtrails conspiracy beast, but it’s just like trying to leave a Costco question alone or an inquiry about Golden Corral. My DNA just won’t let me walk by.
Real answer: Over the years, I’ve had folks insist we’re all being sterilized by mysterious chemtrails, or poisoned to kill off an excess population, and/or given various vaccines against our will in preparation for an upcoming biological weapon war.
The real answer is far more mundane: It’s just contrails, folks, i.e. the condensation effect of hot jet engine exhaust hitting very cold atmospheric temperatures and creating water vapor. There is no vast government conspiracy to inundate us with some mystery chemical or biological weapon.
Before we go too far, you’ll need to know that dihydrogen monoxide is simply water.
“I continue to be amazed that people who appear to be well-educated and intelligent become convinced that contrails are anything more than dihydrogen monoxide vapor,” David Easterling, founder of Future Climate LLC and a former longtime federal research meteorologist in Asheville, told me via email. “Contrails occur in the stratosphere (25,000-40,000 feet or higher) when hot exhaust containing dihydrogen monoxide vapor and small particles (soot) from combustion from a jet engine mixes with very cold (-25 to -70F) air that also has dihydrogen monoxide vapor, resulting in condensation on the small particles and forming a cloudlike trail.”
The trails can sometimes look like clouds.
“Contrails can persist, eventually forming cirrus cloudlike structures, or disappear fairly quickly,” Easterling said. “Contrails are not composed of chemicals that the government is spraying into the environment for some nefarious reason.”
Of course, conspiracy theorists don’t buy this, but Easterling makes a compelling case.
“If they were (spraying chemicals), the people authorizing it and their families would also be subject to any effects that resulted from that chemical,” Easterling said. “Furthermore, any chemicals or solid particles (like the soot) would travel hundreds to thousands of miles spreading out in the stratosphere before either mixing with the air into such tiny quantities that they would be rendered harmless, or gradually falling out (if they were solids) in such tiny quantities that, again, they would be rendered harmless.”
And let’s remember that people, as a species, are really terrible at keeping secrets.
// Watchdog file photo by Dan DeWitt
“Lastly, all the major airlines and cargo companies, plus a host of private aviators, would all have to be in on it, which is highly doubtful since most people, except Costco, have a problem keeping a secret,” Easterling said, referring to the long-running rumors about Costco locating here, confirmed last year by the company itself. “So, the notion of ‘chemtrails’ is only humorous and provides grist for Answer Man questions every year or so.”
If you’d really like to, ahem, dive into the dihydrogen monoxide issue, visit the satirical www.dhmo.org. And for fun, read this article, “Should we ban this chemical?” Spoiler alert: it’s about water.
Question: I read in the Charlotte Observer recently that a judge ordered that Asheville must pay $81,000 to five people for not allowing them to participate on a volunteer board. Who in the city made this decision of blatant, illegal discrimination? Do they still have their job? What fund does this $81,000 come out of? I can think of about a million things we could do in the city with this much money. As a taxpayer, this is pretty infuriating.
My answer: I mean, the city could 100 percent use that amount of money to conduct a study on the feasibility of initiating further research to see if that warrants a final inquiry into finally considering — possibly — doing something with the Pit of Despair downtown. Pending council approval, of course.
Real answer: The Charlotte Observer did indeed run a story in early December with the headline, “Federal judge orders Asheville to pay 5 white residents in discrimination lawsuit.” (Note: Unless you’re an Observer subscriber, you’ll hit a paywall trying to access the story.) The story stated:
“The city of Asheville must pay five white residents who filed a federal lawsuit claiming they were racially discriminated against when they were rejected from a volunteer board that advises the city on equity, according to a news release from a Western North Carolina group. WNC Citizens for Equality said the Human Relations Commission of Asheville posted application forms indicating ‘white persons were automatically excluded from serving unless they could prove a ‘plus factor,’” such as being gay or transgender or living in public housing.”
U.S. District Court Judge Martin Reidinger ordered the city to pay more than $81,000 for the plaintiffs’ legal fees, the story notes.
Asheville City Attorney Brad Branham said Monday that the city has filed an appeal challenging the judge’s order to pay attorneys’ fees. Via email, Branham also offered some clarifications to my reader’s question and the situation overall.
“This matter stems from a lawsuit filed by a group of individuals alleging discrimination in the appointment of members to the city’s Human Relations Commission,” Branham said. “More particularly, the allegations of the lawsuit claimed that membership quotas, defined by characteristics such as race or sexual identity described in the enabling ordinance, prohibited or limited the ability of white individuals to obtain an appointment.”
Branham noted that the ordinance was adopted before he joined the city in April 2019, so he could not speak about how it came about.
“What I can say is that the city took action after my arrival to eliminate those membership criteria,” Branham said. “The lawsuit was recently settled with the City Council taking action to further modify the existing ordinance related to membership.”
The city did not agree to make any monetary payment as part of the settlement.
“However, following the approval of the settlement documentation, the plaintiffs’ attorneys made a motion requesting an award of attorney’s fees,” Branham said. “This motion was recently granted.”
That’s what the city is appealing, Branham said.
John Miall, one of the plaintiffs and a member of WNC Citizens for Equality, said Monday he personally has received no payments.
“As a plaintiff who settled and received nothing more than the satisfaction of the city agreeing to follow the law, I have no financial interest in attorney fees,” Miall said in a written message. “In fact, from a time standpoint and sitting for depositions it cost me out of pocket.”
During his full-time work career, Miall served as the city’s risk management manager. (He recently unsuccessfully challenged Vice Mayor Antanette Mosley’s eligibility to run for reelection.)
As far as who was responsible for creating the Human Relations Commission, the proposal to create one formally goes back to June 2017, when the “City Council created a Blue Ribbon Task Force for the purpose of discussing and ultimately advising the City Council about the creation of a new advisory board focused on human relations within the city,” according to a city press release from then. The commission held its first meeting in August 2018.
Former Vice Mayor Gwen Wisler was on the task force, but she left office in December 2022. Gary Jackson was city manager in 2017, but he’s long gone, and his replacement, Debra Campbell, left the city at the end of 2025.
According to a February 2018 Citizen Times article, former City Council Member Keith Young was involved with the project, first floating the idea of the commission in 2016. He left council in 2020, although he is running for a seat again this year.
The only current council members who were around in 2017 were Mayor Esther Manheimer, who’s been on council since 2009, and Sheneika Smith, who joined council in December 2017 (before the vote to create the Blue Ribbon Committee). The Council vote to approve creation of the Blue Ribbon committee was unanimous.
Smith said she voted for the approval of members in 2018.
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Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Got a question? Send it to John Boyle at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org or 828-337-0941. His Answer Man columns appear each Tuesday and Friday. The Watchdog’s reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.
