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Verizon tower might share space with new firehouse

FALLS VILLAGE — Another cellular phone facility has been proposed for Falls Village. Verizon Wireless has filed notice with the town that it wants to construct a tower on Route 7, on property owned by the Falls Village Volunteer Fire Department.

In a March 31 letter to First Selectman Pat Mechare, S. Derek Phelps, executive director of the Connecticut Siting Council, invited the town to comment on the company’s proposal for a 150-foot-tall monopole-style tower “disguised as a pine tree.�

The 7-acre parcel of land near the intersection with Six Rod Road is the future home of a new emergency services center for the volunteer fire and rescue company. In its application, the company says the proposed tower will provide coverage to Verizon customers in the southwestern part of town, including “Route 7 and portions of routes 112 and 126, as well as local roads in the Falls Village area.�

Also called a monopine, the structure would feature branches that extend an additional 7 feet above the tower. If constructed, the facility would include a 12-foot-by 30-foot equipment shelter located near the base of the tower to house its radio equipment and back-up generator.

Verizon also plans to install 12 panel-type antennas, with the town’s emergency services antenna extending off the top of the tower.

Mechare said the selectmen will comment on the proposed tower as soon as the Planning and Zoning Commission meets to consider it. According to the Connecticut Siting Council’s Web site, no public hearing has been scheduled yet. The Siting Council is charged with deciding where towers will be placed in Connecticut.

About a year ago, Verizon announced its intention to build a nearly identical tower in the northern end of the town, just south of the intersection of Route 7 and Undermountain Road on the Epstein and Laplaca properties.

Ellery “Woods� Sinclair, the town’s coordinator of information on communications towers, said he has never heard back from Verizon about the status of last year’s proposed facility. Since the two sites are only a couple of miles away from each other, Sinclair is working on the assumption that the company has abandoned the northerly location in favor of the fire department site.

Last year’s Verizon proposal followed a 2006 plan calling for wireless facilities to be placed on top of an existing Connecticut Light & Power transmission tower on Beebe Hill Road.

That application was withdrawn 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.

Lakeville Journal

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