NORTH CANAAN, Conn. -- The seven-year battle over a proposed golf course in North Canaan and Norfolk is over -- at least for now.

The project has been fought by neighbors, including Wheaton Byers.

"I was appalled because it contravened everything I thought about this particular area," Byers said.

He said his land is adjacent to the 780-acre Yale Farm land on the mountainside in the two towns on which the luxury golf course is proposed.

"I didn't understand how, economically, it could make sense to them anymore, but on the other hand, if you're talking with and working with people with lots of money," Byers said.

Developer Roland Betts, who developed the Chelsea Piers complex in New York and rescued the Texas Rangers with his college friend, George Bush, said in a statement that the collapse of the economy is what killed the project.

"They were going to do a good job, I'm convinced of that," he said in the statement. "They were doing their best to do it and do it right, but it was just the wrong thing, in my view, for this area.

Aside from aesthetic and land-use concerns, residents were also concerned for the well-being of groundwater, streams and wetlands. They said the projected would have taken 9 million gallons of water for the project, but that many of them get their water from the aquifer on Yale Farm or the Whiting River.

Though not everyone in the area was opposed to the project, opponents were joined by environmental groups and the attorney general in their fight.