Call him Ahab?

Just as Herman Melville’s literary captain of the Pequod vowed to chase Moby-Dick “’round the horn, hope and Norway maelstrom,” wind developer Harley Lee is pursuing turbine plans in Redington Township with a similiar tenacity.

Lee’s new gambit is having Carrabassett Valley annex mountaintop land his company, Maine Mountain Power, owns in Redington, which would let its $180 million wind power project skirt review by the Land Use Regulation Commission, where it’s been rejected.

Twice.

As part of a town, the project would be eligible for expedited permitting review by state and local officials, as outlined in wind legislation enacted last year. The path to the mountains, it seems to Lee, runs through the valley.

Lee deserves points for persistence and a sense of history. After all, Carrabassett Valley was created for essentially the same reason – to duck the state. Jerusalem Township voters incorporated as Carrabassett Valley in 1971 to escape a 15-mill state tax rate.

But here the sense of history fades. The Legislature had the chance to include Redington for expedited status in the recent wind legislation, and didn’t. Now Lee wants these lawmakers to support annexation, though it’s a thinly veiled attempt to sidestep that same law.

Lee’s insistence on re-introducing his first plan – 30 turbines on Redington Pond Range and Black Nubble Mountain – rather than his second – 18 turbines on Redington alone – also likely works against him.

That second plan was the product of compromise with environmental advocates, namely the Natural Resources Council of Maine, which opposed the first. Pushing the original again could destroy this alliance, and turn friends into staunch enemies.

It remains highly unlikely that the NRCM, for example, would support any wind project that includes the Redington Pond Range.

Also, maybe the strongest argument now for MMP’s project is inequity; other turbine plans with greater environmental impact, and less proportional energy output, have been approved with far less fanfare. Through its two reviews, it did feel like MMP was being singled out.

Since January, when the second plan was rejected by LURC by a 4-2 vote, the energy world has gone haywire. With this landscape as a backdrop, MMP could probably make a compelling case for reconsidering its project.

And, this plan is no longer a novelty. Lee was a trailblazer; Redington and Black Nubble was the first wind farm pushed in Maine. Now, turbine prospectors are staking claims to Maine’s high grounds with gold rush fever. More blades may change opinions on MMP.

Yet these convincing points could be sacrificed in brazen pursuit of annexation, through circumventing the venue in which they could carry weight: LURC. Lee and Maine Mountain Power could better reach the mountaintop by again traveling through the regulator.

Instead of, as now proposed, by taking a shortcut through the valley.