For These North Country Landowners, relationships with land and neighbors triumph over personal profit
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David Chase on his woodlot in Clarksville.
Sept. 20, 2013 -- It’s been more than six months since David Chase turned down Northern Pass’s offer of $1 million for his 12-acre woodlot in Clarksville he said was valued at $32,000. He’s had plenty of time to look back on his decision.
Does he have any regrets?
“No, I don’t have any regrets. Everybody needs money, but money is not the end all,” he said.
Instead of allowing his land to be used for a private high-voltage electricity line, Chase joined with fellow Clarksville landowners Charley Morgan, Diane and Donald Bilodeau and Mike Keezer, and nearby Stewartstown resident Nancy Dodge to work with the Forest Society to block Northern Pass’s plan to erect transmission towers and lines through scenic Coos County. All four parties have granted the Forest Society easements or easement options on their land that prohibit utility towers and lines.
Chase lives in Lancaster but has a portable sawmill on his Clarksville lot and cuts firewood for himself and others. He hopes to someday build a little camp there. He acknowledges that he may have considered the offer under different circumstances, but there was too much to lose by selling to Northern Pass.
His property is right across the road from his good friend Charley Morgan’s house, and his gain would have been his friend’s loss.
“Charley took me in when I got divorced. He gave me a place to live. If you were to put towers there (on his 12 acres), the line would go right next to his bedroom. There was no way I was going to be his friend if I sold out.”
Northern Pass has spent an estimated $36 million buying land for its transmission line, and utility officials often refer to working with “willing landowners.” Chase and his neighbors count themselves among the unwilling.
Chase said he had multiple offers from Northern Pass over about a year and a half’s time. At first, a man approached him when he was sitting on his sawmill and offered him double what his land was worth if he would agree to sell that day.
“I said no way, I have to think about this,” Chase said.
Then, a realtor he had done business with in the past called representing Northern Pass and offering a land swap. His 12 acres for a parcel on a pond valued at $112,000, more than three times the value of his piece. “I actually did go look at it. I was just curious. You needed a bulldozer to get to the place. I told her I’m not interested. She wanted to visit. I told her no, don’t bother. She came anyway.”
The next offer was $300,000, Chase said. “I always told everybody my land is not for sale. They don’t want to hear that they just want to keep making more offers.”
The certified letter that came next promised to be the final offer: $1 million if he responded within 48 hours.
“By then I had already started the easement. I knew what my final decision was going to be.”
Being faced with such a decision makes you think hard about what you believe, what’s important in life, he said.
“Northern Pass absolutely doesn’t make sense. I don’t believe it’s right for New Hampshire. It’s totally wrong.”
Chase’s friend Morgan has lived on his eight acres for the past 31 years. At 81 years old, he said he has no desire to live anywhere else and turned down Northern Pass’s offers of land swaps. “I want to make 100 on this land and have them (the town) give me the golden cane,” he said.
Currently, Northern Pass’s preferred route would utilize land other neighbors have sold, so he would look at the towers and lines out his windows despite having an easement on his own property. “It would go right in front of me, then go underground when it gets out of my view,” he said. “It’s mind-boggling.”
Morgan’s reasons for keeping Northern Pass off his land are many, but he especially doesn’t like the thought of North Country people being treated like peons, stepped on by a giant corporation from Canada (Hydro Quebec, the private corporation behind the Northern Pass project).
“I hope we can completely stop this stuff. This is an economically depressed area. We don’t need our tourism industry wiped out,” he said.
“I can’t tell you how many people stop their cars there on Route 145 to see that view. That’s where the lines will be if Northern Pass goes through,” Donald Bilodeau said.
The property is mostly meadows and fields. The Bilodeaus have it mowed regularly to protect grassland habitats needed by many birds like the northern harriers that come back to breed every year.
Northern Pass planners announced an adjusted route in response to opposition in July, but the latest proposal won’t do anything to mitigate the visual blight in Clarksville, Bilodeau said.
“The towers are all going to be visible from Route 145. That’s what I don’t understand. They sent out those brochures saying ‘We listened.’ Well, they didn’t listen. They’re going right there in front of everyone.”
Turning away inquiries from Northern Pass representatives about selling their land was a testament to the strong ties to the land all members of the family feel, Bilodeau said.
“We could have made a lot of money,” he said. “I have two grown daughters, and we’re all in agreement: Don’t sell for anything.”
Nancy Dodge’s home is just down the road from the 160-acre property she protected from transmission lines with an easement option, which gives the Forest Society the right to a future easement. Her land’s north boundary marks the line between Clarksville and Stewartstown. An outspoken critic of Northern Pass and active letter-to-the-editor writer in the Colebrook Chronicle, Dodge said she and many of her neighbors wanted to do whatever they could to stop the lines and towers from getting from Stewartstown to Clarksville.
“All we have left up here is tourism,” Dodge said. “Pretty much people come here because it’s beautiful. It won’t be beautiful with gigantic towers up here all over the place.”