Cell Tower Height Raises Concern in Windsor

By Noah Hoffenberg
iBerkshires Correspondent
12:11AM / Monday, April 06, 2009

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WINDSOR, Mass. — Hearings on the proposed wireless tower in Windsor will continue until later this month, as the town awaits word on whether the project will still function at a lower height.

At last Tuesday's public hearing before the Zoning Board of Adjustment, residents submitted letters of concern that AT&T's proposed 160-foot tower — to be built on Patricia Boynton's land at 520 Shaw Road — is too high, said ZBA Clerk David Mongue in an interview Friday.

The site is 720 feet into the woods on north side of Shaw Road, and AT&T's original plans call for a tower that rises 75 feet above the treeline.

Mongue said resident Jim Caffrey, caretaker of Notchview, owned by the Trustees of the Reservations, submitted letters from the Trustees and the Westfield River Wild and Scenic Advisory Committee, of which he is a member, both asking that the tower be no higher than 140 feet, a request based on aesthetics. A similar letter from the National Parks Service was also added to the record, said Mongue.

The issue will become, said Mongue and independent engineer Mark Hutchins of Brattleboro, Vt., whether the tower will still be able to broadcast a quality signal from the lower height.

Hutchins, working for the town at AT&T's expense, said that pine trees — of which Windsor has many — can act as a sponge to wireless signals, and could reduce the efficacy of the tower.

That's problematic, said Hutchins and Mongue, because if the tower is too short, efforts to co-locate other wireless companies' antennas on it would prove fruitless, and more towers would need to be erected in town to suit their needs. Hutchins said that six to 12 antennas are often located on the same tower.

Town bylaw — as well as the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 — require that municipalities site towers in such a way that co-location is possible, to reduce the unnecessary proliferation of towers across the country.

Thus, efforts to maintain an area's aesthetic qualities might be undermined if a tower ends up being too short. There lies the rub, said Mongue.

"What's worse, two 140-foot towers or one 160-foot tower?" Mongue asked.

Hutchins, who's completing a report on the project for the town, is awaiting additional information from AT&T on the siting of the tower as wells as its functionality at the lower height.

A radio engineer who's also a former tower landlord, Hutchins said one of his main charges is to make sure that the town doesn't unwittingly breach the Telecommunications Act, which would wrest control of the project from the local level and bypass Windsor's zoning.

"What sort of looming in the background is the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and I have to make sure that local boards don't run afoul of that. They have to be careful that a [project] denial doesn't run into a denial of service," said Hutchins.

Service is considered a right and is a major component of the act, and its denial could easily move the project into court review. In a previous interview, ZBA Chairman Robert Bradley indicated that denial wasn't likely.

Other issues

The ZBA will also be deliberating soon whether to permit AT&T a variance on the size of its fence and footprint, as the company is looking to exceed limits stated in the bylaw. Mongue said no decision has been made yet on whether to permit the company to have a fence that's 8 feet high, two feet taller than allowed in the bylaw, and a 50-foot by 50-foot site footprint, as opposed to the bylaw's permitted 25-foot by 25-foot footprint.

AT&T has stated that the former is for greater security, and the latter to allow for other companies to have room for their own outbuildings.

It's unknown if AT&T has been approached by other wireless providers who wish to use its tower to bring service to the area.

A second balloon test — conducted March 28 — turned out to be needed, as the first test balloon from early March had become entangled in trees. The second test worked out fine, said Mongue.

Also, while all parties knew where the proposed site for the tower was physically located, AT&T's paperwork had the coordinates wrong, said Hutchins.

In this proceeding, I found that the site coordinates for some of the submissions were incorrect. And not just off  by a little bit, but off by a fair amount, several hundred feet,” said Hutchins. Mongue said the coordinates have been since rectified.

The service planned for Windsor, and for an additional tower in Savoy, should be online by next year, said Kate MacKinnon, spokeswoman for AT&T.

"Windsor and Savoy appear to be on our plan for 2010, and right now everything looks like it's going as planned, but as you know that's quite a ways away and anything can happen," said MacKinnon.

AT&T has brought other sites online this year in Western Massachusetts, including towers in Becket, Tolland and Huntington, and more will come later this year in Otis, Wilbraham, as well as an additional site in Tolland.

This year's plan builds on the company's 2008 tower roll out, which added service to more than 200 sites across the state.

"Little by little, we're always looking for new ways to bring more coverage to the area,” said MacKinnon. She wasn't sure how many more sites are planned for this year.

The ZBA will meet again on April 28 and, if Hutchins' report is complete, the board will move into deliberative session to rule on the project. Of the five members on board, two are abutters — Jack Sobon and Thomas Musiak. Four remain sitting: John Garcia, John Kittredge, Bradley and Mongue.

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