I was born in 1921 and grew up on Kelso Creek Road, and still live within ¼ mile of the Kelso Creek flood channel.

I remember when I was a child, my father waking us up to go out and “Listen!” We could hear the roaring and see the water raging down the channel.

Many times since I have witnessed flooding. Once from Short Canyon that covered a house and apple trees with sand. In 1984 several floods came down the mountains over my barns. Yes, the water flows down to the Kelso Creek channel, which flows over part of the proposed Weldon Solar Power Plant. You cannot plan for thunderstorm water.

Other places in the valley where I have witnessed flooding: Erskine Creek east of Isabella in July, 2008; Scodie Canyon in Onyx; Cap Canyon east of Onyx; Nicoll’s Peak south of Weldon post office; Mountain Mesa and Kelso Canyon, September 1970.

If you were to view this valley from the air, you would see how it was formed over the millennia by flood waters. Of all the above-named watersheds, by far the largest is Kelso Creek. If you alter the course of the Kelso Creek flood channel, the flood waters would come through the Powers Tract, (which borders the Proposed Solar Plant,) where many families now live.

The big “100 year Floods”—in 1868, which my grandparents witnessed, and in early December, 1966, of which I have pictures—changed the course of the South Fork River and took out the bridges over the South Fork and the North Fork in Kernville.

Who can say what the flood waters may do in the years to come? If the river and the bridges cannot stand up to the flood, how can a solar power plant do so?

Winifred Henderson

Weldon