September 15, 2008
by Ed Naile
As the Chairman of the Coalition of NH Taxpayers and someone who drives into Concord from the Hillsboro area regularly, I am privy to some not commonly known information about NH’s transportation plans.
You heard it here first! The NH Dept of Transportation is using some highway money for an exciting new gamble. They are working on a project named:
The Henniker/Hopkinton/Boston Regional Airport
Apparently, highway officials noticed that the portion of Rt. 202 between Stumpfield Road in Hopkinton and the Rt. 114 bridge overpass in Henniker was almost as wide as an airport runway – so they decided to make the leap to a full-fledged jumbo jet landing field.
The runway is wide enough to land most planes but now with the addition of extra wide lanes near small, low traffic, country roads, NH will be able to offset some of the increased traffic at the Manchester/Boston Regional Airport.
This is an exciting venture seeing that NH has a $300 million dollar deficit, is borrowing to cover operating expenses and uses 60% of its gas tax money for things other than building roads. We are, through this project, setting an example for other states.
Some might say that using a Grade-all to remove rocks way off of the newly paved sides of the runway was a bit extravagant, not me. It’s hard to concentrate on driving knowing that just 50 feet away, ledge is poking up out of the weeds.
So where is the new terminal if this really is an airport you ask?
Here is what my sources tell me so far.
Just up the road in Hopkinton, there is now, just recently completed, a project where a small apple orchard was leveled to build an 11,000 square foot structure certainly large enough to house a small airport terminal.
Governor Lynch currently lives there.
See the genius in this project? Only in “small government” New Hampshire could a project like this be pulled off.