Letters to the editor — April 18

Your views

• Published April 18, 2008

Praying to God to end the unnecessary killing of innocent children can hardly be considered useless. Members of our groups do support organizations in support of low- income, single parents; we foster and adopt all types of children, healthy and with special needs; we provide homes and support for unwed mothers; we provide the truth about what an abortion does to the unborn child and to the women who undergo one — something Planned Parenthood does not do.

Abortion might be legal, but it will always be morally wrong.

Paula Towne, Olympia

Blame gravity for the December floods

Many people seem almost obsessed with trying to understand why the Chehalis River flooding occurred this past December, and, more importantly, who is to blame for it. They also want to know who is responsible for preventing it from occurring again.

Well, as to blame, I place my vote with gravity. Rain falls from the sky and flows downhill to the lowest areas in the landscape. The more it rains, the more water flows downhill until valley floodplains begin to FLOOD when rainfall becomes excessive.

Intelligent people should understand there is nothing that can be done to prevent this natural phenomenon from occurring. Expecting the federal government to build dikes to protect us from floodwaters is exactly why we have all of the floodplain damage from flooding in the first place. Sure, the dikes work fine until they eventually fail, and then everyone that got baited into living in the floodplain suffers as the waters rise and everything gets destroyed.

Instead of building dikes to control where floodwaters go, it would be much wiser to build mounds that would elevate things of value above the height of floodwaters. People on every floodplain farm should construct two such earthen mounds, one for livestock to temporarily flee too, and one where motorized vehicles could be parked.

All floodplain buildings should also be placed atop elevated mounds, or built on pilings, as should the freeway. The old idea of trying to force floodwaters to go where they do not want to is just that — an old idea.