Hidden design: cell towers succeed in the Adirondack Park

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December 14, 2008

Latest additions will boost coverage on Northway

By KIM SMITH DEDAM The Press Republican Sun Dec 14, 2008, 11:08 PM EST

RAY BROOK — It's a common misconception that towers more than 40 feet tall are never allowed in the Adirondack Park.

In an overview at the recent Adirondack Park Agency meeting, staff presented commissioners with an in-depth report showing exactly how many communication-tower projects have been approved inside the Blue Line since 1973.

Tall towers and added antennae are always located on private land, and cannot, by law, be built on state-owned Forest Preserve.

But a total 96 telecommunication structures exist in the Adirondacks, said staff environmental planner Ariel Diggory.

A total 154 telecommunication permits and permit amendments have been issued since 1973.

Not one tower project permit has been denied.

"Many of them are emergency-services related," said Mark Sengenberger, APA executive director of regulatory programs.

And most are built near roads or in town hamlets.

RESEARCH
Diggory culled data from permit applications and inventories, going back to before APA was formed.

Finding about eight types of towers in use, she generated an interactive map that shows layers, even zoom-able satellite topography, of every tower location, tower height and its permit number.

The map is not currently online, but "it could be," Diggory said.

The greatest concentration of permits issued this year, she said — and of projects pending approval — is along the Adirondack Northway.

HIDDEN
Working with several phone-company engineers, APA successfully set seven new towers in 2008, each between 89 and 104 feet tall, designed to visually disappear in surrounding forest growth.

One of them will be built to look like a pine tree.

Commissioners last week compared simulation photos made in the design phase to actual pictures taken after construction to see how well the plans worked.

In some cases, arrows are needed to pick out the cell-phone towers.

The APA Towers Policy, updated in 2000, expressly requires tall towers to be "substantially invisible."

Towers Policy also requires co-location of telecommunications equipment wherever possible, a rule encouraging wireless and radio companies — even those with different and competing technologies — to work together.

SUCCESS
What some critics considered stringent restrictions have actually produced a growing number of successfully well-hidden, expertly located towers, rarely interfering with mountain-ridge views in the protected Adirondack Forest Preserve, APA staff said.

APA planners credited the cellular-phone companies for diligence in careful selection of tower sites.

Last year, in all:

  Verizon Wireless received five permits for new towers and one for co-location on a smokestack.

  T-Mobile received eight permits to co-locate antennas, five of which will serve new T-Mobile I-87 corridor system expansion.

  AT&T; received one permit to build a new tower, one for a replacement tower and one co-location permit.

  Independent Towers, LLC, based in Albany, received the first permit ever issued to build a tower designed expressly as a co-location site.

NORTHWAY SYSTEM
In two projects now under staff review, Sengenberger said, two cell-phone providers are looking to each put a tower within 100 feet of each other near an Interstate 87 rest area.

APA staff are working to find a co-location solution.

The two companies, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile, each have planned complete cell-phone systems for the I-87 corridor.

Three weeks ago, Verizon turned on the second of 13 new towers it is building on a 46-mile stretch of the Northway with little or no cell service.

The Verizon plan was put in motion slightly less than two years ago, in part to improve public safety after a string of horrible accidents left motorists stranded — including two cases that ended in the loss of life — with no access to cell service to call for help.

T-Mobile engineered a similar plan along the busy travel corridor.

Of 17 potential new T-Mobile sites in the Adirondack Park, 11 are on the Northway, Sengenberger said.

SHORTCUT
As part of the review session, commissioners approved a rule allowing staff planners to issue permits for towers they know to be "substantially invisible" without bringing them before APA commissioners.

The new measure, with a one-year trial period from now until December 2009, would hasten approval for some tower permits and curtail the expense, in some cases, of costly photographic simulations.

Of the eight new towers approved in 2008, three — almost half — would have fit criteria granting permits with staff review, Sengenberger said.

Staff, he said, have learned how to tell from balloon tests how well the towers are hidden.

E-mail Kim Smith Dedam at: kdedam@pressrepublican.com