Weather Tower on Sulphur Mountain

* Re “Hagman and Weather Towers, “ Ventura County letters, Feb. 6.

Craig Miller seriously misrepresents the efforts of Ojai residents to have the radar tower relocated. Most of the residents who are exposed to radiation from the radar tower are not wealthy, yet they are just as concerned as Larry Hagman about the possible health effects of this exposure on their families.

Miller’s assumption that the National Weather Service “must have done their homework” in the area of health risks is naive and misguided. The standards upon which the NWS bases its claims that the exposure levels my neighbors are receiving are safe are right now being revised due to growing awareness in the scientific community that much lower levels of radiation exposure than previously assumed do cause measurable biological effects and are therefore more likely to produce disease.

Moreover, even the exposure limits set by the weather service based on these old standards come very close to being exceeded in a number of homes near the tower; in one case a neighbor is receiving 12 times this limit.

It is also illogical to compare the situation on Sulphur Mountain Road to other sites because this is the only site in California where a Doppler radar tower is located within a residential community.

As we in Ventura County Citizens Against Radiation Exposure have expressed many times in the media, we are not asking for the cessation of the coverage that the tower provides, only the relocation to an alternate site outside of our (anybody’s) residential neighborhood. Authoritative geologists and radar experts we have consulted tell us that Sulphur Mountain is neither the only nor the best site for coverage not duplicated by the three other Doppler radars in the coastal area of Southern California.

BRUCE GARBER

Ventura County Citizens

Against Radiation Exposure

Ojai