Official offers primer

To help allay some fears and frustrations among those in the Northwest Corner who are concerned about the proliferation of cell phone towers, Connecticut Siting Council Executive Director Derek Phelps came to Cornwall Town Hall Sept. 26 to explain how the quasi-state agency makes its decisions. He was invited by the first selectmen of several Litchfield County towns.

In Connecticut, towns no longer have the power to decide if and where a tower will be built. That decision rests with the Siting Council.

During a PowerPoint presentation and question period, Phelps explained how cell phone coverage works (or doesn’t) and how service providers choose sites. He expected an audience of mostly planning officers, but got a diversity of town officials and residents from Cornwall, Falls Village, Gaylordsville, Kent, Salisbury, Sharon, Warren and Washington.

One thing people need to understand, Phelps said, is that providers take a regional approach, plotting out large coverage areas and sites where they want to build towers well into the future.

"It’s a huge capital investment and they don’t want to put up towers that they don’t need later on. They are not picking off sites one by one."

The Siting Council tries to guide providers toward making the towers as unobtrusive as possible. It also can insist that multiple service providers share one tower (though most prefer to have a tower of their own) and it encourages builders to site towers on existing structures.

Blights on the landscape

An irony in this area of scenic hills is that, in order to work, the towers have to be placed high on those hills; or many smaller units have to be built on church steeples and silos to fill in coverage gaps.

The Siting Council encourages these smaller, less visible structures. Providers and their engineers are now coming up with ingenious ways to comply. The council has approved the mounting of antenna arrays on gas station signs, smoke stacks, water towers, flagpoles and silos. Even those "monopine" towers can be nearly invisible if properly placed.

Phelps noted that antennae on existing structures are not regulated, provided the structure is still used for its primary purpose.

In Connecticut, where a high value is placed on beauty, Phelps said that when he makes presentations, most communities are worried about towers creating a visual blight.

But there are other essential issues as well. The Siting Council studies a site’s ecology and its scenic resources; it examines health concerns, using FCC standards for safety; and it looks at existing land uses around the proposed site.

Connecticut residents remain conflicted about towers, Phelps reported.

Word that a tower is proposed — and that it might ruin a view — prompts protests. At the same time, cell phone users are still seeing "no service" more often than not — and that prompts protests as well.

We can hear you now

What input do town officials and the public have on tower siting decisions? Plenty, according to Phelps, who said the council makes it a priority to make the hearing process "as transparent as possible."

Applicants are encouraged to go beyond legal notices for public hearing and raise awareness through other means, such as sandwich signs along roadways. In a year or two, Phelps expects all information for an application to be available on the Siting Council’s Web site.

One would think a public hearing means just that: The public is heard and their comments and concerns weighed and investigated. The latter is an issue. Unless a concern brought forth by an individual is compelling enough, the council is not going to launch an investigation. But just as in a court case, the judge or jury relies on evidence brought before it.

Phelps said the best approach to being heard is to be a legal intervener on an application. But that can be an expensive and daunting option and is not usually undertaken by individuals. Interveners are expected to prepare their paperwork, and they can be subjected to a cross-examination. A positive: Interveners have the right to appeal a Siting Council decision.

Possibly the best approach, Phelps advised, is for towns to collect and present the concerns of property owners and town planners.

Yes, yes and yes

Phelps fielded questions about the council’s approval percentages. He acknowledged they are high. Last year, the council heard two to three applications per month, and denied one or two all year. He explained that by the time a proposed tower comes before the council, the sticky issues have often been resolved already.

"Planning a tower is an expensive proposition. And we charge a lot more in application fees than they want to pay. The perception that we approve nearly all the applications is true, but that’s because service providers are professional organizations that obtain professional talent to bring us good applications."

It is typical for an application to show a second tower site, as a back-up plan, even though that is no longer required by state law.

"It used to be mandatory," Phelps said, "but the applicants would just throw in a site they weren’t serious about."

While the council looks at coverage as a first concern, its job is not to advocate for providers, as the public often perceives, Phelps said.

"Overall, societal issues have driven us toward wireless telephony, including emergency communications," he said. "We are looking at reality. In 1985, there were 2,000 towers in the country. Now there are about 80,000. The average American travels more than 14,000 miles per year. We are reaching the tipping point of demand for wireless service on the road, especially now that pay phones have all but disappeared. In an emergency, if you don’t have a cell signal, all that’s left is to knock on someone’s door. At 2 a.m., I don’t think they’re going to open it."

Choosing who talks, and when

Phelps also talked about the issue of capacity, a growing problem that is behind the "dropped call syndrome."

Each tower has a finite capacity to handle calls. Each antenna sector (those cylinders arranged in circle around towers pole) can handle only 72 calls.

A computer handles call traffic. In more congested areas, when capacity is reached, it makes priority decisions.

"If you’ve been talking for awhile and someone else tries to make a call, the computer is likely to drop your call," Phelps said. "That’s why you can have four bars, and the person on the other end can have four bars, and you suddenly lose the signal. You haven’t really lost the signal, you’ve been cut off."