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The summer began with an ending note. The long tenure of Region One School Superintendent Lisa Carter culminated with her retirement, though her next chapter has started at EdAdvance in Litchfield. The story of Lisa Carter’s big contribution to Region One schools appeared in a June edition of The Lakeville Journal along with photographs of all the graduates in the Class of 2024 from Housatonic Valley Regional High School. Graduation would follow the next week, marking an end to secondary education and a new beginning for all the graduates.
With the start of school again this week, it’s time to say goodbye to summer and to welcome a new season. The pages of last week’s Journal were filled with profiles of the new teachers at HVRHS that included photos and brief bios — compiled by one of HVRHS’s own, Mia Barnes, a Class of 2022 alumna. Barnes, a rising junior at Skidmore College, was among The Journal’s 2024 class of summer interns.
With school started again, The Journal last week also published school bus routes for all the towns for morning and afternoon trips.
Throughout the summer weeks, besides keeping a bead on education, The Journal has focused on what else matters in our community. Our reporters have written about the critical need for affordable housing in the Northwest Corner. Covering the environment, we have explained the potentially devastating impact of hydrilla on our lakes. On the health front, in July we profiled the new executive director of Project Sage, a community organization dedicated to supporting victims of relationship violence through a range of services and outreach programs. Before that, in May we told our readers about the state-of-the-art health care center in North Canaan that welcomed patients in June, commencing an era for health care described as critically needed and long overdue.
We have reported on the machinations of local government, covering routine committee meetings every week along with related public hearings so that our readers know what their elected representatives — and those much-appreciated committee volunteers — decide about matters that affect everyone in the community.
The Journal has expanded its coverage of local sports, because we recognize its importance to the community at-large and especially to the young athletes we capture in our stories and photographs. Steven Waldman, president of Rebuild Local News and co-founder of Report for America, has written that covering local sports — along with obituaries and local theater — can make communities stronger. We can’t agree more. Every week, we aim to provide our readers with a Sports Page. Obituaries also are a mainstay of our publications. With Compass we expand our core coverage to Arts, Entertainment and Lifestyle to contribute to our community by showcasing what is going on beyond the government, education, health care, housing, environment and sports beats.
As citizens of the Northwest Corner, we are connected by a communal fabric that is rich in history, rich in human talent and full of aspiration for a better world. We know that people who follow local news generally feel more attachment to their community. Our news staff believes that no story is too small for The Lakeville Journal. We know that our readers are devoted to the Turning Back the Pages column that draws us back to our past. The same is true of the bus-routes listings, vital news for today’s families.
With all the news that happens over the summer, it has not been a vacation time for our staff, yet we, too, feel the potential energy of a new season and look forward to giving you the best in community news coverage.
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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.