In a letter to the editor in The Dalles Chronicle on May 3, Columbia Riverkeeper’s director, Brent Foster, leads one to believe UPC’s proposed “Cascade Wind” 60 mw industrial wind energy facility in the Sevenmile Hill/Wasco Butte area, is a good thing!

I’m sure he’s well-intended, but he doesn’t speak for the hundreds of families residing there when he alludes favorably to this proposed project.

A facility of this magnitude should NEVER be sited near people’s homes, which are the biggest investments of their lives!

We absolutely need a moratorium on siting any new wind energy facilities until specific wind power siting standards/regulations are developed!

We think the industrial, 40-story tall turbines should be placed no less than 2-3 miles from residences in any circumstances, and at least 5 miles from any town because of their “incompatibility with the surrounding area (residences),” noise, scenic impact, health issues, odor, fire danger and accompanying 30-40 percent property devaluation and lack of access to recreational and hunting areas, etc.

The noise can be extremely disturbing even at 2-3 miles away as documented by neighbors in Maine, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Texas, in the DVDs “Welcome To Mars Hill,“ “Life Under a Wind Plant” and “Protecting Texas,“ available at The Dalles/Wasco library and soon in Hood River.

Help us stop inappropriate wind power development on Sevenmile Hill and you may be stopping current plans for Middle Mountain in Hood River Valley. Yes, Middle Mountain! Inform yourselves about the real impacts of living with industrial-scale wind power (www.wind-watch.com, www.ninapierpont.com, www.families47mile.org), then talk to your neighbors.

What’s next? Fir Mountain, Kingsley Reservoir, Mount Defiance, Mount Hood; all the windy ridges along the Columbia Gorge and even the Oregon coast? The project managers will more than likely depend on local green leaders to usher them in.

Hurting twice

This letter is directed to the June 26 article about the nine-year-old girl struck by an SUV on Cascade Avenue.

I agree with Susan Harris who recently wrote protesting the graphic nature of the article.

What was the point of Sue Ryan’s article: the traffic accident or the intimate nature of the child’s injury? I think that the readers would have been better served with an article about traffic accidents, safety and careful driving. The detailed account of the child’s injury will come back to embarrass her time and time again.

If it was her parents who permitted the detailed explanation of the child’s injuries, I say shame on them for letting their daughter be hurt unnecessarily for a second time.