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AMENIA — Hudson River HealthCare is a step closer to site plan approval on renovations to its Amenia branch, following a Planning Board discussion concerning screening of the building’s parking lot from Route 343.
The proposal will slightly increase the size of the actual building, but inside the work will increase capacity of primary care by 50 percent, explained Chief Administrative Officer Allison Dubois at the Thursday June 24, Planning Board meeting. It will also provide stationary integrated dental service (no more dental bus visits) and mental health services.
The main topic of discussion was the mitigated screening of the parking lot in front of the building. Environmental consultant to the board Michael Klemens was in attendance at the meeting, and had recently provided the board with his comments following a site visit.
Klemens summarized that his major concerns have been with creating some kind of a 5-foot tall screen between Route 343 and the parking lots. That 5-foot buffer, “the minimum,� he clarified, is to obstruct the view of parked cars from the road.
Sounds simple enough, but the best way to go about providing that mitigation turns out to be an extremely costly one, explained Rich Lanzarone, head of the construction management firm hired by Hudson River.
The two main options were a raised bed with plantings or a dry-laid stone wall. The raised beds were preferable to Klemens but as Lanzarone pointed out the cost estimate of the beds was far more than Hudson River could afford.
Hudson River HealthCare is a not-for-profit organization, Lanzarone said, and the grant funding making the project possible is “finite.�
“The cost [for raised beds] would be crushing,� he said. “We would love to do plantings, but the cost is just prohibitive. We need to find another way to meet the needs of the town.�
Klemens conceded that he was “shocked� to discover the high costs of the raised beds, but remained firm that a 3-foot high stone wall, as Lanzarone had proposed earlier in the meeting, would not meet the county’s approval for sufficient screening.
The compromise that was eventually worked out was to move the parking lot further away from Route 343, which would leave room for the stone wall as well as larger plantings behind it to achieve the 5-foot screen Klemens recommended.
Lanzarone said he would update the site plan and send it to the Planning Board, to then be sent to the county for review. The board voted to hold a special Planning Board meeting on July 22, as the scheduled July 1 meeting has been canceled due to the fire company’s carnival. If the county approves the site plan within five days of the July 22 meeting, a public hearing on the project will be held that night.
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Telecom Reg’s Best Kept On the Books
When Connecticut land-use commissions update their regulations, it seems like a no-brainer to jettison old telecommunications regulations adopted decades ago during a short-lived period when municipalities had authority to regulate second generation (2G) transmissions prior to the Connecticut Siting Council (CSC) being ordered by a state court in 2000 to regulate all cell tower infrastructure as “functionally equivalent” services.
It is far better to update those regs instead, especially for macro-towers given new technologies like small cells. Even though only ‘advisory’ to the CSC, the preferences of towns by law must be taken into consideration in CSC decision making. Detailed telecom regs – not just a general wish list -- are evidence that a town has put considerable thought into where they prefer such infrastructure be sited without prohibiting service that many – though not all – citizens want and that first responders rely on for public safety.
Such regs come in handy when egregious tower sites are proposed in sensitive areas, typically on private land. The regs are a town’s first line of defense, especially when cross referenced to plans of conservation and development, P&Z regulations, and wetlands setbacks. They identify how/where the town plans to intersect with the CSC process. They are also a roadmap for service providers regarding preferred sites and sometimes less neighborhood contention. In fact, to have no telecom regs can weaken a town’s rights to protect environmental, scenic, and historic assets, and serve up whole neighborhoods to unnecessary overlapping coverage and corporate overreach. Such regs are unique to every town and should not follow anyone else’s boiler plate, especially industry’s.
Connecticut is the only state that has a centralized siting entity for cell towers. The good news is that applicants must prove need for new tower sites in an evidentiary proceeding and any decisions have the weight of the state behind them. The bad news is that the CSC used to be far less industry-friendly and rote in their reviews, which now resemble a check list. There is an operative assumption at CSC that if an applicant wants a tower, they must need it, otherwise why spend significant money to run the approval gauntlet? This reflects a subtle shift over the years at CSC from sincere willingness to protect the environment toward minimal tweaking of bad applications with minor changes. The bottom line is that towns really cannot rely on the CSC to do all the work for them.
What CSC issues telecom providers is a “certificate of environmental compatibility” after an evidentiary proceeding (not unlike a court case) with intervenors, parties, expert witnesses, and the service provider’s technical pro’s sworn in and subject to cross examination. Service providers get to do the same with any opposition from intervenor/party participants – like towns and citizens -- and their experts. It’s an impressive process whose ultimate goal is the fine balancing between allowing adequate/reliable public services and protecting state ecology with minimal damage to scenic, historic, and recreational values. They unfortunately often fall short of their mandate – like approving cell towers with diesel generators over town aquifers -- evidenced by CSC only rejecting about five cell towers in the past 15-20 years.
The CSC was founded in 1972 and clarified its mission in the 1980’s to prevent the state from being carved up willy-nilly by gas pipelines, high tension corridors, and broadcast towers. With the sudden proliferation of cell towers beginning in late 1990’s, it became the most sued agency in Connecticut by both an arrogant upstart industry if applications were denied and by towns/citizens when bad sites were forced on them. CSC gradually formed a defensive posture that drives their decisions toward industry with deeper pockets and attorneys on retainer.
For citizens, nothing can wreck one’s day like the CSC. It behooves towns to protect what little toolkit they have, and understand the legal parameters of the CSC’s playing field. The CSC is not a “normal” government agency where municipal/citizen redress is based on logic and local support. Their process is largely immune to everything but specific kinds of evidence – like town regs with setbacks/fall zones, radio frequency transmission signal strengths, sensitive areas identified, and detailed wildlife inventory, among others.
There is a current cell tower fight involving two intervening towns -- Washington and Warren; both with good cell tower regs – over a tower site within 1200’ of a Montessori School, near Steep Rock’s nature preserves with comprehensive geology/wildlife databases that include endangered, threatened and special concern flora and fauna, on established federal/state migratory bird flyways, within throwing distance to a historic site capable of being listed on the Underground Railroad, and with an access road on a blind curve entering a state highway that will permanently damage wetlands, vernal pools, and core forests. There are well credentialed environmental experts, including Dr. Michael Klemens, former chair of Salisbury’s P&Z, as well as the former director of migratory bird management at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and an RF engineer testifying to alternative approaches, plus three attorneys representing intervenors. It is the most professional challenge I have seen at CSC since Falls Village successfully mounted one that protected Robbins Swamps several years ago.
The hearing is ongoing, with uncertain results. To see what it takes today to stop an inappropriate tower siting, see Docket #543 under “Pending Matters” at https://portal.ct.gov/csc before removing local cell tower regs – the lowest hanging fruit that any town can possess in case it’s needed.
B, Blake Levitt is the Communications Director at The Berkshire-Litchfield Environmental Council. She writes about how technology affects biology.