Recently I wrote to this newspaper about the floods that formed this valley, and how they might affect the proposed Weldon Solar Plant. (Please note that I say “plant,” not “ranch.”)

Now I am writing about the wind. In this valley the wind usually comes from the west. When it blows very hard, or changes direction, it can do terrible things. I remember when it blew off the roof of my brother’s house, and my sister’s barn roof. When the Weldon Methodist Church was being built, in 1899, the wind blew it over. (As told by my grandmother, Ella P. Smith. See Weldon Methodist Church Centennial booklet, printed in 1971.)

Sand dunes and sage brush were here before my lifetime. Some remain today, including in the area of the proposed solar plant. But most of the land that would be covered by the plant, the part that borders Highway 178 and would surround the historic Methodist Church on three sides, has been leveled and irrigated for many years. Once watered and leveled, the land grew many acres of carrots, hay and grain for beef cattle, and now potatoes, to feed thousands. A few years ago some of this land was planted in carrots. After two fallow years, the wind had returned the land to sand dunes. It had to be leveled again in order to plant Sudan grass last year. Without water, the wind will quickly turn this land back to nature, to sagebrush and sand dunes.

Men are builders – and destroyers. When all the best and most fertile land has been taken over by power plants, or by city sprawl as in the case of Los Angeles, who will feed this hungry world?

Winifred Henderson

Weldon