Dec. 2, 2008 — A local resident wants to know who is messing up the bright blue skies above Lassen County and why no one is doing anything about it. “I’m a nobody,” said Greg Smith, “but I’m also a truth seeker. I moved here 20 years ago for the blue skies and the beautiful weather. It really angers me that somebody is turning our blue skies a creamy white.”

Smith acknowledges he doesn’t know who is responsible for the emissions from jets that frequently seem to morph into clouds above Lassen County.

To the conspiracy theorists and the guests on late night radio talk shows, they’re called chemtrails. Nobody knows for sure, but the conspiracy buffs say the chemtrails could be anything or everything from cloud seeding to weather modification to mind control to some advanced star wars weapons system to radar jamming to government black operations and more.

According to the Web site answers.com, the United States Air Force describes the chemtrail theory as a hoax that has been investigated and refuted by many established and accredited universities, scientific organizations, and major media publications.

Answers.com also reports the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry asserts contrails normally exhibit a wide variation in appearance and the descriptions and photographs of chemtrails are consistent with those of ordinary contrails.

Before you dismiss Smith and those concerned about chemtrails as the very kookiest of kooks, consider that U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich introduced a bill in Congress on Oct. 2, 2001 entitled the Space Preservation Act. Had it been enacted into law, that bill would have permanently prohibited the basing of U.S. weapons in space and required the president to take action to adopt and implement a world treaty banning all space-based weapons.

Kooky or not, the bill, H.R. 2977, defined chemtrails as an “exotic weapon.”

According to the bill, “The term ‘exotic weapons systems’ includes weapons designed to damage space or natural ecosystems (such as the ionosphere and upper atmosphere) or climate, weather, and tectonic systems with the purpose of inducing damage or destruction upon a target population or region on earth or in space.”

Ultimately, the bill was revised, and the term chemtrails was removed. The revised version of the bill did not pass.

“They keep doing it, whoever they are,” Smith said. “All I know is I wake up in the morning to a beautiful blue sky. Then the planes start flying over, and a couple of hours later we’ve got milky, white skies.”

Smith maintains the streaks in the sky are not contrails — normal exhaust from high flying jets — but chemtrails, which many allege, could be dropping dangerous chemicals and metals on unsuspecting residents.

“We’re getting sprayed on every day,” Smith said. “It’s criminal. If I lit a fire that was polluting the air, I’d have people knocking on my door asking me what I was doing. Somebody in Lassen County has to be responsible for air quality, but they don’t do anything. Our public officials ought to get involved and at least investigate. Somebody needs to ask what’s going on.”

When asked about Smith’s concerns, Lassen County Supervisor Jim Chapman said he’s seen contrails in the skies above Lassen County since he was a child.

Chapman encouraged Smith to bring his concerns to the board of supervisors or the Lassen County Air Pollution Control District. The supervisor said members of the public often use the public forum provided by public governmental bodies and agencies to increase awareness of their concerns and issues.

Smith said that’s exactly what happened when the Shasta County Board of Supervisors, acting as that county’s Air Pollution Control Board, heard from residents concerned about chemtrails earlier this year on Aug. 6.

Shasta County residents and scientists complained they had taken 40 soil and snow samples from locations across the north state and all of them showed abnormally high levels of metals.

The board heard from 13 of the residents at the meeting, but staff said the county could not afford the estimated $500,000 to $1 million to launch a proper scientific investigation into the matter.

In the end, the board forwarded a video recording of the meeting to state and federal agencies to illustrate the residents’ concerns, the Record Searchlight reported.

“This is not just a local phenomenon,” Smith said. “You can see the jets crisscrossing the sky in big V shapes. If people give it any thought at all, with five minutes research, they’ll know these aren’t contrails. It’s not just condensation.”

Contrails are exhaust from jets that normally dissipate rapidly. Smith said the chemtrails linger and turn the sky a milky white. He said the planes often lay down the chemtrails in grid-shaped patterns that eventually expand into cloud-like formations that frequently cover the entire sky.

Smith said he’s looked at the planes leaving the chemtrails with binoculars, and they don’t look like commercial planes to him.

“Can you imagine the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on all these chemicals?” Smith asked. “Sometimes it extends from horizon to horizon.”

Smith said concerns about chemtrails arise all around the world.

The European Parliament investigated the “murky veils, possibly due to the presence of barium and aluminum” in August 2007, according to willthomasonline.net.

“A lot of people are aware of the chemtrails,” Smith said, “but no one seems to be able to find out who’s doing it and why. We need to find out.”