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100 years ago — August 1921
Salisbury was honored on Thursday last by a visit from James Hartness, Governor of Vermont, who, with his wife and a member of his staff called upon old time friends at Sunny Slopes. Governor Hartness was much pleased with Salisbury.
TACONIC — Mrs. L. Beal has gone to Pittsfield with her two boys to have their adenoids removed before school opens.
ORE HILL — Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Garrison of Hudson are occupying one of the Company’s houses.
Mr. Adolfo Perantoni of Hartford was a week end guest of his former teacher, Miss Esther Frink.
50 years ago — August 1971
New hope for revival of the Northwest Connecticut Glass Recycling arose this week when a used trailer was located that could be used for sorting at the Salisbury Town Dump. George Kiefer of Salisbury located the trailer, which he said had been used for grain storage on a farm and can be purchased for $100. Several other persons are joining in the search for additional trailers at a low price.
U.S. Gypsum Company will shut down its Falls Village quarry and lime plant by March 1, a company spokesman announced in Chicago Monday. The Sand Road plant, which employs 21 people, will close for two reasons, according to William Stephens, its manager. Intracompany economics, with U.S. Gypsum discovering a substitute material for the finely ground lime dust produced in Falls Village, make the shutdown feasible, he disclosed. A demand by the Connecticut Clean Air Commission for installation of air pollution control devices was also a definite factor, he said. “It was the straw the broke the camel’s back,” he said, referring to the Clean Air ruling.
When fire broke out at Bierce’s General Store in West Cornwall early Tuesday afternoon, fire companies came from West Cornwall, Cornwall Bridge, Sharon and Ellsworth. Their united efforts brought the blaze under control by evening, but the 97-year-old building suffered considerable damage.
The Southern New England Telephone Company has announced plans to put a new telephone line underground through much of Canaan’s business district.
For the second time in two weeks the North Canaan Dog Pound has been broken into and all the animals released. According to Mrs. Alfred Thomen, wife of the dog warden, the pound has been vandalized five times in the past two years, despite the various methods that have been tried to make the cages secure.
25 years ago — August 1996
FALLS VILLAGE — Alice Wolf stepped around the yard-wide pine tree growing through her front porch and opened the screen door to visitors. Mrs. Wolf and her husband Bill have enlarged the hole in the porch floor and roof three times to accommodate the tree. Last year the wind-blown pine towering 110 feet above the house separated the porch from the rest of the cottage. Mrs. Wolf, who spends the rest of the year in St. Augustine, Fla., says Pine Grove is a place where no one may cut down a tree regardless of where it’s growing. hit
It is also a place where every face is a familiar one, where residents raise an American flag to signify they are home, where no one may buy one of the 64 Victorian cottages without a formal vote of the families already there, a place where the old owners leave the linen, the furniture, even the tableware for the new owners, and a place where the pull of history, religion and the common good compels everyone. This weekend, the 70 or so members of the Pine Grove Association will celebrate the beginnings of this summer community as a Methodist campground 125 years ago.
CANAAN — Two out-of-state women miraculously escaped injury Tuesday when their car hit a utility pole head on, snapped it in two and came to rest on top of the remaining three-foot-high section. The accident occurred when their 1993 Buick Regal veered off a straight stretch of Church Street between Grove and Barlow streets at 5:25 p.m. Both women were able to safely leave the car, although power lines were pulled down around it. The road was closed and traffic detoured around the scene until the pole was replaced. About six homes were without power for several hours.
CANAAN — The pickin’s were slim at Edwards this week. Customers were greeted by sparsely stocked and empty shelves throughout the store in anticipation of the supermarket’s transformation to Stop and Shop. The store will close at 6 p.m. this Saturday and remain closed for a scheduled four days while crews replace signs, reset and restock shelves with Stop and Shop and Select brand products.
The views expressed here are not necessarily those of The Lakeville Journal and The Journal does not support or oppose candidates for public office.
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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.