Report Inappropriate Comments

So we're talking about 3,000,000 takeoffs and landings over the first 30 years in the lifetime of someone born today in the general Coupevillle area. That would seems to constitute a form of physical assault.

For what it's worth, I think we/'ve really reached a breaking point with plans for increased training at Whidbey Air. l originally sided, albeit a bit reluctantly, with national defense and the station's reasonable proximity to the coast. My understanding was that Growlers are designed to interfere with the communications of such things as incoming missiles. Travel time for interception thus would be vital (it seemed in my layman's mind); it would be counter-productive to move the planes inland to some less populated area. But them I realized that that this is a training station and trained pilots will likely be serving largely aboard aircraft carriers at sea.

I still don't mind the residual noise myself as it periodically occurs here in Port Townsend, somewhat removed from the immediate scene. But I do believe residents closer to the continual landings, takeoffs, touchdowns, fly-overs, etc. already have borne enough discomfort on behalf of all of the rest of us. We should feel obligated to do something for them in return, even if we can't eliminate their basic problem.

It's now an enough-is-enough situation with plans to hugely enlarge the training operation. Perhaps we could instead take some of the many tens of billions Trump jacks into the defense budget every time around and build a secondary training complex somewhere more isolated in the central state, without its being in someone's backyard. Maybe even someday transfer a great part of the Whidbey operation there—and leave us with more of a first-responder station, itself augmenting any planes aboard carriers favorably located at sea.

I've come to trust our state' s Attorney General over the years also. And he is way, way more knowledgeable than I on this whole affair, and also has a broader view of it. I will stand by his judgment.