Monopine structure could mask new cell tower

FALLS VILLAGE — After the withdrawal of an application last year by Nextel-Sprint, another cellular phone facility has been proposed for Falls Village. Verizon Wireless has filed notice with the town that it wants to construct at tower just south of the intersection of Route 7 and Undermountain Road.

In a March 23 letter to Town Clerk Mary Palmer, EBI Consulting, the Manhattan-based compliance firm representing Verizon, invited the town to comment on the company’s proposal for a 150-foot-tall monopole-style "designed to resemble a pine tree."

Also called a monopine, the structure would feature branches that extend an additional seven feet above the tower. If constructed, the facility would include a 12-foot-by-30-foot equipment shelter on a 100-foot-by-100-foot lease area on or near the Epstein and Laplaca properties.

Ellery "Woods" Sinclair, the town’s coordinator of information on communications towers, said the next step would be for a formal appearance before state officials.

"We are waiting at this point to have the Siting Council schedule a hearing," Sinclair said in an interview.

According to the Siting Council’s Web site, no hearing has been scheduled yet. The Siting Council is charged with deciding where towers will be placed in Connecticut.

The recent Verizon proposal follows one last year for wireless facilities to be placed on top of an existing Connecticut Light & Power transmission tower on Beebe Hill Road. That application was withdrawn in October after the applicant, Nextel-Sprint, learned a 1942 easement granted to CL&P did not permit the construction of an equipment shelter the company needed to build. Nearby resident Carl Bornemann and his attorneys, Gabriel Seymour and Geoffrey Drury, had raised the issue.

One of the intervenors at a pre-hearing Siting Council meeting, a Vermont-based non-profit environmental group called EMR Policy Institute, also filed a sworn statement testifying that "the proposed Beebe Hill cell tower threatens to destroy wildlife habitats; kill large numbers of nesting and migratory birds; disrupt natural food chains; and jeopardize frogs, other amphibians, and rare plants in Connecticut’s most unique inland wetland."

According to a news release issued by Janet Newton, EMR Policy Institute’s president, Ms. Newton also warned of potential harm to students at the nearby Lee H. Kellogg School. As cell tower opponents have discovered, the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 does not permit health effects to be considered as part of cell tower applications. But according to Seymour, wildlife is a different matter.

The EMR Policy Institute was among the sponsors of a four-hour forum Saturday in Sheffield on the health and environmental effects of cell towers and wireless technologies. Six speakers addressed topics ranging from electromagnetic fields to the legal aspects of challenging telecommunications facilities.