Requiem for the high country

This is a thank-you, a lament, and a hope. "Bittersweet" hardly covers it.

The thank-you is for the privilege of hunting, fishing, photographing, hiking or just even knowing about Phillips Brook. The landowners for lo these many years, chiefly logging and timberland companies, have traditionally left the beautiful basin and its spectacular high country open for public enjoyment. There is every indication that this will continue, but anyway, thanks.

The lament is that change is in the wind. It now appears likely that the state's Site Evaluation Committee will grant a permit for the construction of 33 410-foot tall, blinking-light-topped wind turbines across seven or so miles of horizon, and the huge road system needed to construct and maintain them.

Right up front, I'm for wind power and about as green as a guy can be. I love trees even as I cut and burn them. I nurture vegetables. I love green. I even dress in it.

This isn't a not-in-my-backyard issue. If the much-ballyhooed power for 40,000 homes was destined for the North Country, I might be for it. It's not. If the profits were going here instead of Connecticut, that might help, too. So would more jobs than six.

And here is where the laments come in.

Peter Roth was assigned by the state Attorney General's Office to be an intervener in the permitting process, to look after the public's interest. In getting up at the last public meeting and saying, essentially, that this is the wrong project by the wrong outfit in the wrong place, he thought he was doing his job. A letter on Coos County stationery castigating him for it was sent all around, in particular to Attorney General Kelly Ayotte, who proceeded to more or less hang Mr. Roth out to dry, asserting that she, and by implication the Governor and the state, want the project.

To me, this is not the New Hampshire way.

But the even bigger lament is that we have become a state willing to sell its scenery and its very skyline for profits and power going elsewhere, a state that already produces twice as much power as it consumes, much of it already "green" in the form of hydro.

We value our shorelines and beaches because we believe it's in the public interest to protect them. Hence our jealous guardianship of the people's right to walk the beach -- any beach. Likewise, we value our rivers, lakes and ponds, and protect them as public domain. What about the hapless high country and horizon?

Well, at least it won't be fragmenting deeds and trophy homes dotting the skyline, and maybe, when the towers are long gone, the conservation community will be able to buy Phillips Brook and preserve it as working forest, its wetlands and high country forever protected. This apparently has been the strategy all along. But still, it's a shame.