Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

Suddenly the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road is transformed into an ugly, urban wired and poled road. From one day to the next greenery has had to make way for those ugly long poles now dominating the landscape. Where are we, on the Vineyard, or in some industrial backyard where ugliness triumphs over nature and aesthetics?

Yes, we had and have old withered gray poles, not really taller than the surrounding trees, a Vineyard oddity we sort of put up with. But these topsail masts? No way! Remember when the golf range on the old wind farm property had poles and nets that could be seen above the trees? They had to be taken down by public demand.

And what nonsense is it, in this day and age of increasing storms and damaging wire destruction to put up taller, heavier poles? Of course all the wiring should go underground to begin with! We know digging costs money, but it will be a lot cheaper for NStar’s investors to dig now rather than pay enormous damages later —think poles crashing and lives lost. Meanwhile, Vineyarders and our summer guests should not have to live with these short-term, utterly ugly self-defeating solutions.

Alida O’Loughlin, Oak Bluffs