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Following a hearing last week with
cellular service providers and area officials, Adirondack Park
Agency staff intends to propose a new definition of co-location to
commissioners in the near future.
The aim of the proposed change in
definition is to reduce the cost burden on cellular providers while
maintaining the agency mandate to protect the aesthetic nature of
the park.
APA spokesman Keith McKeever said
Wednesday staff will alter the agency’s definition of co-location to
include two separate towers on the same site.
McKeever said if commissioners approve
the policy shift, the company building the second tower on the
parcel could avoid the costly process of full-review and be granted
a general permit.
“There is only a 15-day turnaround on
general permits,” McKeever said.
Full agency reviews require several
site visits by agency staff and hours of computer modeling. A full
review can take several months before it reaches the APA board for
approval.
If adopted, the agency would refer to
adjacent towers as “horizontal co-location.”
Verizon and AT&T Wireless officials
reported that the cost of constructing a single cell tower in the
park is twice the cost of building one elsewhere.
Historically, co-location was
specifically used to describe two separate cellular arrays on the
same tower. But the APA would prefer to keep towers as low as
functionally possible while still providing cell coverage throughout
the most densely populated and highly-traveled areas of the region.
State Senator Betty Little and the
Adirondack Council have recently renewed calls to allow for taller
towers that would allow single-structure co-location while limiting
vegetative clearing and service road construction
“It just makes more ecological sense
to me that we build a single tower and put more carriers on it,”
Little recently told WNBZ.
Officials from the town of Duane have
complained that the recently-constructed 65-foot cell tower on the
campus of Paul Smith’s College is not providing the radius of
service they’d anticipated. The tower was proposed to be 90 feet,
but was reduced to 65 during agency review.
McKeever said information suggests the
amount of users on the single array may be reducing the tower’s
service area, especially when students are on campus.
But Verizon Wireless Northeast
spokesman John O’Malley told WNBZ that the most significant
determining factor in a tower’s coverage area is its height.
“A taller tower lets us cover a
broader area,” O’Malley said. “If by number of users you mean the
number of customers using a site at any one time, that wouldn’t
affect service very significantly.”
In 2009, the APA approved permits for
14 new towers and 14 single-tower co-locations. The agency also
approved three projects that would be considered horizontal
co-locations.
The agency’s towers policy – which
applies to any proposed project greater than 40 feet in height –
requires that a project be “substantially invisible” from
well-traveled and public areas.
“The substantial invisibility standard
does limit our ability to design sites with the potential for
co-location because sites within the Park can only be slightly
taller than the prevailing tree height where they are located,
leaving us room for only our equipment,” O’Malley said.
-Jon
Alexander, 2-8-10
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