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CORNWALL — What fun it was, to have soaring bleachers filled with cheering fans. For the Cornwall Consolidated School girls basketball team, and their coaches, that was the perfect end to a great season, even if the team lost in a close contest to Salisbury in the championship game last Thursday.
“We have so much fun during the season. We worked hard, we learned a lot, but sometimes our practices were spent partly lying on the floor and talking,� said Coach Patty Rovezzi. “We just had fun together.�
Rovezzi, who is also the school secretary, has been coaching for the past few years with her sister, Bonnie Burdick, a teacher at Cornwall Consolidated.
Goofing off in practice occasionally obviously did not hurt their game.
They came into the Region One championship team well-matched against Salisbury Central School. Each team had lost only one game, falling to the other on that team’s home court, and by almost the same point spread.
Rovezzi does not like to lay blame on illness, but it was a factor last week. Three girls had spent some time in the nurse’s office earlier that day. The nausea felt by more than one girl during the game was not caused by nerves.
But they played well, once they got past a few minutes’ worth of jitters, Rovezzi said.
“It just wasn’t their day to win. But it was so wonderful to see our kids and kids from other schools come out to cheer the teams on.�
She also credited great coaching skills by Salisbury’s Anthony O’Niel, for whom she said she has great respect.
“We have a fast team, and we play a fast game. Anthony knew enough to slow down the pace, and take away our best strength.
“We are so proud of them,� she said of her athletes. “They are not only great players who make up a great team, they are a nice bunch of girls.�
They will lose five players to graduation this year. Thinking about next year, Rovezzi said they may have to tap the sixth grade, and even the fifth grade for a full team, but she bets either way it will be fun.
She related a story that sums up why she and Burdick coach:
They were invited to be special guests at the last practice of a group of second-, third- and fourth-graders coached by Jayne and Gordon Ridgway and K.C. Baird. That happened to be the day after the championship game.
They went, a little apprehensively, still exhausted from the tournament the day before.
“As we walked toward the gym, we could hear someone say, ‘Here they come.’ They came running up to us and 17 little girls hugged us until we nearly fell down. They scrimmaged for us and we felt like celebrities. Every time one of them made a basket, they looked over to see if we were watching.
“They are so excited and can’t wait to be on our team. I looked at Bonnie and said I don’t know how many more years we can do this, especially after the day before, but we knew that this was exactly why we do it.�
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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.