With high fire hazards, why no prescribed burns yet? What’s with the 5 p.m. early voting cutoff? Why can’t the city tap into the Biltmore Estate’s reservoir? • Asheville Watchdog
Today’s round of questions, my smart-aleck replies and the real answers:
Question: We know U.S. Forest Service employees have been hard at work opening roads, recreation areas and trails (and we thank them) on the Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests. But with all the hazardous fuel (trees) now on the ground, what are they doing to mitigate this added risk for future wildfires? We haven’t had rain in weeks, which has been a blessing to recovery efforts, but are they concerned about this fall fire season? Next spring? What steps are being taken, and what do we need to know?
My answer: If there is a prescribed burn anywhere, could someone please come take away my busted fence and toss it on the fire?
Real answer: Tropical Storm Helene undoubtedly felled hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of trees in western North Carolina. It was a slaughter.
Adam Rondeau, public affairs officer with the U.S. Forest Service’s National Forests in North Carolina, noted that Helene “left a significant amount of downed trees and woody debris across much of the area’s forestland, including on both the Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests, leaving us with higher-than-usual levels of fuel on the ground.
Tropical storm-level winds toppled large trees onto houses, like this one in the Beaverdam Run subdivision in North Asheville. // Watchdog photo by Peter H. Lewis
“This, combined with the dry conditions we’ve experienced over the last few weeks, creates a heightened risk of wildfires,” Rondeau said. “As we head into peak fall fire season, we’re identifying available assets, such as firefighting crews, heavy equipment and aircraft, which can be called up at a moment’s notice if the need arises.”
The Forest Service is also “already evaluating plans for the next prescribed burning season when weather conditions are more favorable,” Rondeau said.
The prescribed fire season usually begins in late January or early February in western North Carolina when weather conditions are favorable, then picks up in March, he said.
The North Carolina Forest Service, part of the state Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services, is also keeping a close eye on the forest fire danger, according to spokesperson Philip R. Jackson. The Asheville area has had almost no rain since Helene struck Sept. 27.
The N.C. Forest Service is the lead agency for wildfire response on state and privately owned or managed land, and Jackson said the service “has and will continue urging North Carolinians to be careful and responsible with outdoor fire…”
He provided a list of recommendations and stressed how important they are, as this is a prime season for wildfires (see below).
“As the weather has remained dry over the last several weeks since Hurricane Helene, it’s imperative that folks adhere to the guidance to help reduce the number of new fire starts by minimizing ignition sources,” Jackson said, adding, “Especially with the added fuel of down trees and storm debris in western NC.”
“Folks choosing to burn need to refrain from doing so on dry, windy days, especially as relative humidity levels decrease this time of year,” Jackson said, noting that you should stay with a set fire until it’s completely out. “Even if your fire area is no longer showing flames, as long as it continues to smolder, hiss, crackle and pop, heat is still present, and as long as the heat source remains present, so does the risk for reignition, escape and becoming a wildfire.”
Kelley Klope, spokesperson for the Asheville Fire Department, said firefighters are particularly concerned about wildfires from October through early December, and all the Helene debris adds to that concern. Open burning is illegal inside city limits.
“Common ignition sources like backyard debris burning, arson, escaped campfires, and the use of machinery and vehicles can lead to human-caused wildfires,” Klope said.
Around here, we have what’s known as the “wildland-urban interface, where developed areas meet wildlands,” Klope said.
“This poses significant risks, especially as rapid population growth pushes more people into once-rural regions, increasing wildland-urban interface acreage,” Klope said. “In fact, three of the top four states with the most homes near wildlands are in the South, including North Carolina.”
Klope said that as of 2020, more than half of North Carolina’s population lives in such areas.
Klope also recommended the Firewise USA program, a voluntary framework that helps communities reduce wildfire risks and increase the ignition resistance of homes.
The North Carolina Forest Service reminds us that human activity causes 99 percent of forest fires. In 2023, the service responded to nearly 2,000 wildfires from October through December, including more than 1,200 in November alone.
So with that in mind, here are the tips from the N.C. Forest Service:
Make sure you have a valid burn permit. You can obtain a permit at any N.C. Forest
Be sure you are fully prepared before burning. To control the fire, you will need a wate hose, bucket, steel rake and a shovel for tossing dirt on the fire. Keep a phone nearby, too.
Never use kerosene, gasoline, diesel fuel or other flammable liquids to speed up burning.
Douse burning charcoal briquettes or campfires thoroughly with water. Drown all embers, not just the red ones. When soaked, stir the coals and soak them again. Make sure everything is wet and that embers are cold to the touch. If you do not have water, mix enough dirt or sand with the embers to extinguish the fire, being careful not to bury the fire. Never dump hot ashes or coals into a wooded area.
Never leave your fire. Stay with it until it is completely out.
Finally, check with your municipality or county before burning.
Question: Did you see that the Democrats on the board of elections voted last week to continue to keep early voting closing at 5 p.m.? That should be reported on. We are the only county doing this. Other counties hit hard by Helene are staying open until 7:30 p.m. It’s upset a lot of people, and this is the sort of thing that plants seeds of doubt with a form of voter suppression. Polls throughout our state and country are all manned by retired folks, so perhaps they should stay open so that shift workers and people who work on weekends can come in later.
My answer: Hey, I live in Henderson County, where the geniuses on the Board of Elections had the brilliant idea of having just one early voting site. Then when the state forced them to open more, they had two voting machines for the entire Town of Fletcher. It took me two hours to vote. I know, first world problem, but where has common sense gone?
Real answer: Buncombe County spokesperson Lillian Govus said the Board of Elections on Oct. 8 “approved a new early voting plan in response to the devastation from the storm.” The previous plan was approved May 21 “and included locations that were no longer safe/accessible after the storm.
“The new plan includes longer hours on Saturdays, and an additional day of Sunday voting as compared to previous years,” Govus said. “The Board of Elections will not be taking on changing hours the last week of early voting. It was considered last week; however, ultimately the board did not approve changing hours.”
Govus said Board Chair Jake Quinn cited these reasons:
Confusion after having to delay the absentee ballot mailing due to having to print ballots without the “We the People” party candidates.
While early voting officials were trained ahead of the storm, a quarter were no longer available to work after the storm.
Unsafe road conditions after dark for voters and poll workers.
Having to change 17 of 80 election day precincts and the associated logistical, administrative, and communication challenges.
While I doubt the change is curtailing the rural vote, as some have claimed, I certainly hope the board goes back to the 7:30 p.m. closing time for the next election. This system really does create a problem for working people.
Early voters line up on a recent afternoon at a polling station on Asheville’s Depot Street. // Watchdog photo by Starr Sariego
Corinne Duncan, Buncombe County’s director of elections, also addressed an early voting question at the Oct. 31 daily county Helene briefing. She echoed the comments of Govus and Quinn, noting that once the storm hit, the State Board of Elections “knew that the western counties might have challenges with the plans that were approved by the State Board and the county boards, and so they put in more flexibility into the plans to be able to build new plans.
With roads, water and power out, some sites, such as fire stations, could not be used, Duncan noted. They also had concerns about poll workers.
“We didn’t have as many early voting poll workers available to us as we did before the storm, so staff produced a plan that we knew that we would be able to implement,” Duncan said. “That included a reduction of hours during the week and then an expansion of hours and an additional day during the weekend.”
They proposed that to “make sure that staff and poll workers would be able to safely get home” in the evenings, and because communication, initially, was problematic.
“Communication has improved drastically since the time that the plan was proposed, but we really wanted to make sure that with these changes so close to early voting, that we were able to communicate the change as well,” Duncan said. “So being able to say ‘nine to five every single day,’ including the weekends, was advantageous.”
She noted that the board reviewed the plan and passed it unanimously. The plan also went to the State Board of Elections for approval.
A reminder that Election Day, mercifully, is Tuesday, Nov. 5. Polls will be open from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Question: Has the city asked the Biltmore Estate if it can tap into the Busbee Reservoir? Has the estate offered this? How much could it boost available water?
My answer: If I lived in Asheville, I would’ve drilled a well Sept. 28.
Real answer: The Biltmore Estate does own the Busbee Reservoir a couple of miles from the estate, but it’s not the estate’s drinking water supply. As I reported in February 2023, until the 1980s, the estate used the Busbee Reservoir and a 2.2-mile long water line that conveyed water to the Lone Pine Reservoir on a hill above the Biltmore House.
Treatability issues prevent the city of Asheville from using water from the Biltmore Estate, Asheville Water Resources Department spokesperson Clay Chandler said. // Watchdog photo by Keith Campbell
But new regulations required the estate to connect to the city of Asheville’s water system in the 1980s.
“Growth of the estate, demands for additional water supply, and the dependence on a single water supply line from Asheville to the Estate raised concerns of vulnerability,” McGill Associates stated in a 2021 news release about work it did for the estate. The company drilled wells for the estate that augment its water supply and can provide water in the event of a city outage.
I sent this question to the Biltmore Estate but did not hear back by deadline. The estate said previously it uses water from its reservoirs only for irrigation.
Asheville Water Resources Department spokesperson Clay Chandler responded for the city via email.
“The short answer is that it is not feasible for the city to use water from the Biltmore Estate,” “Availability of water is not the primary problem. It’s the treatability of the available supply.”
Also, Chandler said if the city were to introduce treated water into the system “from a source other than North Fork, there is no guarantee the two sources wouldn’t eventually mix somewhere in our distribution system.”
The city’s main source of water, North Fork Reservoir in Black Mountain, sustained washouts to the two primary lines coming out of the plant, as well as a backup, leaving the city’s 63,000 customers with no water for weeks. The city repaired the bypass line and is now providing chlorinated water from the lake, but it is not potable.
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/.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Alan Wooten | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-04-03 14:11:00
(The Center Square) – Hurricane Helene’s death toll in North Carolina has grown to 107 and is 236 across seven states.
Gov. Josh Stein shared news of a death in the Avery County community of Newland. The wife of a couple camping was among those who died in earlier confirmations; the husband’s death was added on Thursday after his body was found.
The governor said the couple was camping on the last weekend of September when the storm hit.
This weekend marks the beginning of the 28th week of recovery. Damage is estimated at $60 billion.
Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in Dekle Beach, Fla., on Sept. 26. It was expected to come north to the Appalachian Mountains; however, the rainfall total from its dissipation there exceeded all forecasts.
Some places got more than 30 inches, most were at 24 or more. Due to terrain, water often rushed before it pooled and flooded – very unlike the flooding that happens in the coastal plains.
AccuWeather said rainfall totals were 32.51 inches in Jeter Mountain, 31.36 inches in Busick, and 26.65 inches in Hughes.
Forty-two died in Buncombe County, 11 in Yancey and 10 in Henderson.
Respective state officials say 49 were killed in South Carolina, 34 in Georgia, 25 in Florida, 18 in Tennessee, two in Virginia and one in Indiana.
Numbers were confirmed by The Center Square based on information supplied by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services; South Carolina Department of Public Safety; Georgia Emergency Management Agency; Florida Department of Law Enforcement; Tennessee Emergency Management Agency; Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin; and the Gibson County Sheriff’s Office in Indiana.
Helene is the fourth most deadly hurricane from the Atlantic Basin in the last three-quarters of a century. Only Katrina (2005, deaths 1,392), Audrey (1957, deaths 416) and Camille (1969, deaths 256) killed more people.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Alan Wooten | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-04-02 14:21:00
(The Center Square) – Minority benefit against the majority giving up “agency, creativity, decision-making and other vital skills” in what is described as a valley of an artificial intelligence journey is likely in the next few years, says one voice among hundreds in a report from Elon University.
John M. Stuart’s full-length essay, one of 200 such responses in “Being Human in 2035: How Are We Changing in the Age of AI?,” speaks to the potential problems foreseen as artificial intelligence continues to be incorporated into everyday life by many at varying levels from professional to personal to just plain curious. The report authored by Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie of Elon’s Imagining the Digital Future Center says “the fragile future of some foundational and unique traits” found only in humans is a concern for 6 in 10.
“I fear – the time being – that while there will be a growing minority benefitting ever more significantly with these tools, most people will continue to give up agency, creativity, decision-making and other vital skills to these still-primitive AIs and the tools will remain too centralized and locked down with interfaces that are simply out of our personal control as citizens,” writes Smart, a self-billed global futurist, foresight consultant, entrepreneur and CEO of Foresight University. “I fear we’re still walking into an adaptive valley in which things continue to get worse before they get better. Looking ahead past the next decade, I can imagine a world in which open-source personal AIs are trustworthy and human-centered.
“Many political reforms will reempower our middle class and greatly improve rights and autonomy for all humans, whether or not they are going through life with PAIs. I would bet the vast majority of us will consider ourselves joined at the hip to our digital twins once they become useful enough. I hope we have the courage, vision and discipline to get through this AI valley as quickly and humanely as we can.”
Among the ideas by 2035 from the essays, Paul Saffo offered, “The first multi-trillion-dollar corporation will employ no humans except legally required executives and board, have no offices, own no property and operate entirely through AI and automated systems.”
Saffo is a futurist and technology forecaster in the Silicon Valley of California, and a consulting professor at the School of Engineering at Stanford.
In another, Vint Cerf wrote, “We may find it hard to distinguish between artificial personalities and the real ones. That may result in a search for reliable proof of humanity so that we and bots can tell the difference.”
Cerf is generally known as one of the “fathers of the internet” alongside Robert Kahn and for the internet protocol suite, colloquially known as TCP/IP.
Working alongside the well-respected Elon University Poll, the survey asked, “What might be the magnitude of overall change in the next decade in people’s native operating systems and operations as we more broadly adapt to and use advanced AIs by 2035? From five choices, 61% said considerable (deep and meaningful change 38%) and dramatic (fundamental, revolutionary change 23%) and another 31% said moderate and noticeable, meaning clear and distinct.
Only 5% said minor change and 3% no noticeable change.
“This report is a revealing and provocative declaration to the profound depth of change people are undergoing – often without really noticing at all – as we adapt to deeper uses of advancing AI technology,” Anderson said. “Collectively, these experts are calling on humanity to think intentionally and carefully, taking wise actions now, so we do not sleepwalk into an AI future that we never intended and do not want.”
In another question, respondents answered whether artificial intelligence and related technologies are likely to change the essence of being human. Fifty percent said changes were equally better and worse, 23% said mostly for the worse, and 16% said mostly for the better.
The analysis predicted change mostly negative in nine areas: social and emotional intelligence; capacity and willingness to think deeply about complex concepts; trust in widely shared values and norms; confidence in their native abilities; empathy and application of moral judgment; mental well-being; sense of agency; sense of identity and purpose; and metacognition.
Mostly positive, the report says, are curiosity and capacity to learn; decision-making and problem-solving; and innovative thinking and creativity.
Anderson and Rainie and those working on the analysis did not use large language models for writing and editing, or in analysis of the quantitative data for the qualitative essays. Authors said there was brief experimentation and human realization “there were serious flaws and inaccuracies.” The report says 223 of 301 who responded did so “fully generated out of my own mind, with no LLM assistance.”
SUMMARY: On March 14, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to dramatically reduce funding for seven federal agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which awarded $266.7 million in 2024. The order aims to eliminate non-essential functions and cut agency personnel to legal minimums. The move sparked backlash from library and museum organizations, warning it would severely impact early literacy programs, internet access, job assistance, and community services. Critics urged Congress to intervene, while the administration framed the cuts as part of efforts to reduce government waste under the U.S. DOGE Service initiative led by Elon Musk.