Your voice: Oct. 1, 2025

For years, I have wished to write so well, as I approach my own eighth decade. Why did I wait so long?! To my other Gorge neighbors, please understand the importance of the issues we all must face (an endless list). May we find the courage to do the right and best thing.

Richard L. Polson

Parkdale

Wasco Co., TD will pay

In response to the proposed transfer of Portland toxic waste to The Dalles landfill (“Superfund cleanup could multiply traffic to landfill,” Sept. 24): It would add 120 trucks per day to the already excessive garbage transport taking place. Simple math would appear to indicate that The Dalles and Wasco County infrastructure is not sufficient to handle this level of load.

Already, there are long lines of trucks trying to exit I-84, and more long lines trying to get onto U.S. Route 30 to avoid starting from a complete stop when using the bridge exit. One truck every 12 minutes can only exacerbate that issue. All local traffic will be forced to the city center exits, which are overloaded as well.

Then there is the concern that 200,000 tons of toxic materials can pass through without an accident. What about the wear on the state and county roads? Highway 197 is pretty treacherous during the winter; adding a lot more trucks and bottling up the road seems not sustainable. The risk at the Five Mile Road intersection, which is bad now, will only increase exponentially.

What guarantees are there that the “lined” depositories at the landfill won’t fail and the “PCBs” end up in our soil and ground water, long after the Texas outfit has moved on? There is a lot of money to be made on this project, but it seems likely the residents of Wasco County and The Dalles will be the ones who end up paying.

Mike Baker

The Dalles

Rule of law

Flying back from his state visit to Great Britain, No. 47 stated that he has declared Antifa a terrorist organization, and that he will employ the powers of the presidency to wipe out Antifa and all its members and funding sources.

Who is a member of Antifa?

Who will decide if YOU are Antifa?

If you did not already know, Antifa is a term for people who oppose fascism. If you are a fascist, you can sleep tight (but keep one eye open — a fellow fascist might snitch on you). Admirers of fascist Germany are watching the U.S.A. proceed on a fast track down the same road Germany took in the 1930s. “Make America Great Again” is 47’s redo of Hitler’s “Make Germany Great Again,” playing on the same plight of the poor and the downtrodden.

Here, Democrats need to wake up and fight harder for the poor and the downtrodden. Detention centers in Germany (Dachau was the first such German center) all became concentration camps that initially just utilized forced labor (the mass killings soon followed). Alligator Alcatraz was the first U.S.A. detention center, and now red states are rushing to complete their own detention centers. Plans involve transitioning the detention centers to for-profit prisons operated by private firms who will hire out the detainees.

Rewriting history to write out the horrors of Nazi Germany (that 47 openly praised prior to his election in 2024) will work for about 1/3 of our population. Can the rest of us wake up before it is too late? I doubt it, but we may still have a chance. Even a few conservative Republicans are awakening. One third of the Robert’s [Supreme] Court has always been awake. All we can hope for is that two of the others will recognize what they have orchestrated in time.

But is even that too late since 47 has zero respect for the rule of law? Are you ready to help end the rule of law? It will not be pretty.

Michael Beug

White Salmon

‘Cowardly lions’

It was the executive office of our country exerting undue pressure on ABC that caused them to pull Jimmy Kimmel from the air. Isn’t it ironic that Disney, a corporation founded on a mute mouse, has become the champion of free speech by reinstating Kimmel. A mouse standing up to corrupt corporate cowardly lions.

Jeri Rutherford

White Salmon

Support for transportation funds

We are writing to express our support for Oregon’s Special Session Transportation Funding package. As business owners in Hood River County, we have kids in our county’s schools, staff members who live throughout the Gorge and customers who come from far and wide to shop with us all months of the year. Although we are close to the Portland Metro area, the communities of Hood River, Odell and Parkdale in the Hood River Valley can become extremely isolated during winter storms, wildfires, and other traffic slowdowns/shutdowns of Interstate 84.

Without the passage of this funding package, this winter the county and ODOT will lack the necessary funds to keep up with plowing on key arteries, creating downstream effects on our ability to get kids to school, for our staff to commute to work and for our customers to get to our shops. The county will also not be able to prioritize adding facilities like Safe Routes to School infrastructure and response times for regular maintenance, such as vegetation and tree removal and ditch cleanouts, will be extended.

We encourage our legislators to pass this funding package and keep our roads safe.

Sincerely,

Jodie Gates

Nathan Devol

Rafe Lerner

John Melesko

Miko Rhulen

Pepi Gerald

Eddy Patricelli

TJ Gulizia

Mark Ames

Janice Bell

James Pearrow

All from Hood River

Editor's Note: The Oregon Senate passed a transportation funding package Sept. 29.