Visit Midstate Electric Cooperative’s Web site, and you’ll discover two things right away. One, the company sells power. Two, it cares about the environment so much that it wants everyone to visit its LEED Gold certified headquarters in La Pine.

What you won’t find on the page, however, is an invitation to visit the company’s big new pole on Century Drive. But then, an invitation really isn’t necessary. No one who drives by can help noticing the thing. It’s tall, it’s oddly thick, and it has several appendages. If we didn’t know better, we’d wonder whether somebody got drunk and tried to build a giant robot.

In another place, the pole might not be a problem — hidden within a bunch of very tall trees, for instance, or reduced to a quarter of its size and plopped into the middle of a roundabout. But it is masked by nothing, and it marks the beginning of a scenic highway. As a gateway of sorts between a tourism-dependent community and the Deschutes National Forest, it leaves something to be desired.

Electric transmission lines are necessary, of course. All of us use the stuff, and transmitting it in a cost-effective manner often requires environmental compromise. In the case of the Midstate Monolith, however, we suspect that some part of the planning process went badly awry. We suspect this, in part, because representatives of the Deschutes National Forest, Midstate Electric and the owners of the nearby Tetherow resort are meeting today to ponder the pole.

Where does Tetherow come in? The resort’s owners asked Midstate to move the power line that currently runs through Tetherow’s property. Midstate agreed, and Tetherow’s owners are doing all the work and paying the bills, according to Darwin Thurston, Midstate’s engineering operations manager. It is, he says, a “turnkey” project. Midstate simply comes in at the end to inspect everything.

We called Tetherow’s director of development, Jim Tunnell, to ask about the pole. His response: “It’s Midstate’s power line. You really need to talk to them.” Hot potato time.

What separates this power pole problem from the typical scenic-impact squabble is the involvement of public land. The pole itself sits on public land. And in order to move the power line in the way Tetherow wants, Midstate needed permission from the Deschutes National Forest, through which some sections of the power line run. Following the usual planning process, Forest Service officials agreed to let Midstate reroute about 2,000 feet of the power line. Tetherow will now be able to run the line along the edge of its property — underground, according to Midstate’s Thurston.

The result may work for Tetherow. But for the rest of us … well, hop in your car and take a look.

Fortunately, the problem isn’t being ignored. Bend-Fort Rock Ranger Phil Cruz says he has “a lot of concerns” with the pole, and we hope they’re shared by Midstate and Tetherow’s owners. It would be a shame if a project initiated to help private property owners ended up using public land in a way that degraded views for the public. Today’s meeting will clarify their positions.

If all goes well, these entities will read one of the public comments received by the Forest Service during its planning process. And then they’ll say, “Hey, that’s a great idea!”

Among the reroute options rejected by the Forest Service is one that would have required Midstate to bury its 2,000 feet of relocated power line. Such a project would entail a lot of blasting, the Forest Service reasoned, and it also would be very expensive. That’s probably true, but one member of the public had a better idea: “Perhaps only the span over the highway is all that needs to be buried to retain the scenic view, not the entire 0.4 mile of new line.” If nothing else, this would eliminate the one problematic tower.

Strangely, this proposal was waved off. Why? According to the Forest Service, “the Landscape Architect (LA) report showed that the new crossing of the highway by the powerline is not of visual concern.” Apparently, the landscape this architect had in mind was Tokyo.

Assuming that all of the three entities involved in today’s discussion want to get rid of the pole, they should share the outcome of the meeting promptly. Members of the public deserve to know what’s happening. It’s their land that supports the pole, after all, and their views that suffer as a result.