May 6, 2002

APA Stalls Saratoga County's Radio Tower Plan

Saratoga County's plan to upgrade its emergency radio system by erecting 180-foot-tall telecommunications towers in Edinburg, Day, and Hadley has run into at least a temporary roadblock-the Adirondack Park Agency.

No structure taller than 40 feet can be built in the Adirondacks without the APA's approval. Last December, accordingly, Saratoga County applied for a permit to erect these three proposed towers. But the agency ruled that the application was incomplete and bounced it back along with a list of 44 technical questions. To obtain the answers, the county has had to appropriate an additional $100,000 to fund further work (still in progress) by its technical consultants. That brings the total project cost to $500,000 so far without a single foot of steel being erected.

The supporting facilities required by each tower would be housed in a pre-cast concrete blockhouse adjacent to its base. These blockhouses would measure 12 feet by 20 feet. The county's proposal also calls for construction of an access road to each tower.

In handling such permit applications, the APA is working from its new "Policy on Agency Review of Proposals for New Telecommunications Towers and Other Tall Structures in the Adirondack Park." In this set of guidelines, issued in February, the agency says it is trying to meet the public's need for emergency and cell phone service while at the same time protecting the beauty of the Adirondacks. You will find this five-page policy on the APA's web site: www.northnet.org/adirondackparkagency/.

This new policy says that telecommunications facilities should be "substantially invisible" and discourages locating them on ridge lines or mountain tops. That is why the APA has challenged Saratoga County's permit application: The proposed tower in Edinburg would be located on a ridge line (Military Road) readily visible from residences on South Shore Road across Great Sacandaga Lake. The Day tower would be built on high ground off Horse Hill Road on the South Shore, while the tower in Hadley would be perched atop Mount Anthony and viewable from three sides.

John Sheehan of the Adirondack Council, an 18,000-member environmental group, summed up the issue: "It's going to be hard to put a tower 30 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty on a ridge line and have it remain substantially invisible." On the stony peak of Mount Anthony, for example, the proposed tower would be 150 feet taller than the surrounding trees.

However, as the Adirondack Council and others have pointed out, the phrase "substantially invisible" provides plenty of legal wiggle room. What exactly does it mean? Why didn't the APA use "totally invisible" instead? Moreover, concealment of towers is merely recommended, not required, by the policy. To quote the text: "The policy is not intended to set forth a fixed general principle to be rigidly applied. Its tenets are to be utilized solely as guidance and should be applied only after taking into account the specific facts and circumstances set out in the application and project review record for each proposed telecommunications tower."

Thus, Saratoga County's application is one of the early test cases that will determine how the APA's Board of Commissioners will interpret their new policy. The APA's decision will be extremely important to the future of the Adirondacks.

Saratoga County says it wants to build the towers to improve emergency (fire, police, and ambulance) communications by filling in gaps in radio coverage around Great Sacandaga Lake. Some critics have charged that the county wants to build towers taller than it needs so that it can rent space on them to commercial cell companies, allowing the latter to sneak into the area and opening up a new source of revenue for itself.

However, to quote an Associated Press story published in the April 21 Gloversville LEADER-HERALD: "Fred Acunto, Town of Charlton supervisor and a chairman of the county's radio committee, says the notion of 'co-locating' cell equipment on the towers was abandoned because of opposition from the APA. He said the county is open to changes in the plan, including shorter towers."

Meanwhile, up in Hadley, Saratoga County is butting heads with two determined opponents, John and Ruth Bergeron, the co-owners of 250 mountaintop acres on Mount Anthony. The mountain is undeveloped, and the couple want to keep it that way. "I bought the land as a place to hike and walk around and meditate and enjoy nature," Bergeron told the Associated Press.

In addition to erecting a tall steel spire atop Mount Anthony, Saratoga County wants to bulldoze and blast a two-mile-long access road to its steep summit. This would split the property and also provide ready access to trespassers, snowmobiles, and vandals. As far as the Bergerons are concerned, this would defeat the purpose of owning the land, and they have offered to sell all their property to the county at assessed value. They have received no official response.

What the county did do was propose to buy six acres of the land for what Bergeron calls a "nominal" price. The county's offer was faxed to the Bergerons' lawyer at 4:00 p.m. on the day of a public hearing at which the county initiated eminent domain proceedings to take the land in question without the permission of the property owners. The plight of the Bergerons has attracted support from major environmental groups, including the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks. As the Bergerons point out, your property or mine might be in the county's sights the next time around.

A key technical issue determining the fate of Mount Anthony is whether the county actually needs microwave transmissions, which require a direct line of sight, or whether a system using radio and land-line communications could handle the task. Adopting the latter course would open other sites to the county. The APA appears to be interested in this possibility.

Another interesting aspect of this story involves a Saratoga Springs-based company called The LA Group ("LA" stands for "Landscape Architects"). One service offered by the firm is helping clients to prepare and obtain permits from the APA for cell phone towers. Last year, the APA came under fire after it announced that it had hired The LA Group to help draft its new telecommunications tower guidelines. (The APA says the firm was the only one that responded to its request for proposals.) Many environmentalists voiced concerns that this was essentially putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop. The LA Group also is one of the consulting companies that Saratoga County hired to help with its APA permit application.

So the game is afoot. Stay tuned!