Dominic Gospodor is proposing to add up to three more towers to his monument park along the freeway - these to commemorate the victims of drunken drivers and America's history of slavery.

Gospodor, a 79-year-old Seattle retiree, has applied for permits that would add three more 100-foot towers and four 20-foot elevated wooden statues.

The new structures would join those already built to memorialize Holocaust victims, Mother Teresa and American Indians.

The public has until March 19 to comment on the proposal, but don't bother with artistic criticism.

Lewis County Planner Bob Johnson said only substantive comments about possible environmental effects of the project will be considered. Those concerned about traffic should send in a scientific study on traffic patterns, he said.

When the original monuments were installed last summer, there were long northbound traffic backups, which continued on busy weekends until Thanksgiving. But Johnson said the backups weren't attributable to the monuments so much as to the heavy traffic on the four-lane freeway.

To limit Gospodor because of perceived traffic effects would mean a virtual ban on any development along the freeway, Johnson said.

"I'm sure when the Space Needle was built, people slowed down to look at it," he told The Chronicle of Centralia. "Drive by Boeing Field. It's a distraction."

Lewis County Commissioner Dennis Hadaller said he sees no difference between the distraction of the monuments and a herd of elk or picturesque farming activities near a road.

"Are you going to make the farmers take their cattle with the little calves jumping and dancing around ... out of the field because people stop and take pictures?" asked Hadaller, who owns a ranch along U.S. 12 in Ethel.

State Transportation Department representatives, who had concerns about traffic effects from the monuments during busy weekends last summer, say they think the worst is over.

"It did impact traffic. It is not impacting traffic any more at this point," said department spokeswoman Jilayne Jordan. "We don't have a position about what people do with their own property."

Last fall, the department asked Gospodor to cover up a sign that explained the monuments. He did, and there have been no major traffic backups since, Jordan said.

"Were hoping with the sign closed, it will be like looking at a pretty house on the side of the road, or a barn. You look at it, but don't slow down," she said.

Gospodor said he wants to add two large monuments to victims of drunken drivers and to commemorate victims of slavery. He is considering smaller monuments to suffragette Susan B. Anthony and Jonas Salk, developer of a polio vaccine.

Gospodor, a lifelong bachelor with no children, is also looking for a nonprofit group or governmental agency to take over care and ownership of his monument park.