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APA approves 129-foot Verizon Wireless tower in Keene Valley
RAY BROOK, Feb 14, 2010 (The Press-Republican - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Verizon Wireless received a permit for a new 129-foot cellular telephone tower in the hamlet of Keene Valley.
Adirondack Park Agency commissioners approved the new tower -- a simulated pine tree -- to be raised among 100-foot white pines behind the Neighborhood House, an assisted-living home for senior citizens.
The equipment will provide signal to a stretch of Route 73 that winds from St. Huberts to the hamlet of Keene.
Verizon Wireless' antenna array sits on the tower at 119 feet, said APA staff planner George Outcalt.
The additional 10 feet at the top is to "finish the top of the tree," he told commissioners.
Commissioner Dick Booth asked if Verizon Wireless initially brought a simulated-tree design to the table for APA staff review.
Outcalt said the option was part of initial discussions and that APA staff is not aware of any plans for co-location on the tower by other providers.
Keene Valley sits in the center of hundreds of miles of hiking trails cut through the southern Adirondack High Peaks region and Giant Mountain Wilderness Area.
Visual analysis was done with balloon tests in August 2008, Outcalt said, to find the tower is visible in various places throughout the hamlet, including locations on Main Street and Market Street.
"The tower was also visible from Baxter Mountain and the Brothers, however, from these mountain top locations, the tower will be seen from a distance and blend well with the surrounding environment," the draft permit says.
APA sent a team to review balloon flight tests from nearby hiking trails and ascertained the tower will disappear into the pine backdrop surrounding trails at Blueberry Mountain and Rooster Comb, Outcalt said.
In the draft permit, APA staff recommended approval because "it will be located in a hamlet land-use area where existing telephone and electric power is already available, because it will be partially screened from many areas by its location behind the Neighborhood House."
Commissioner Booth asked if staff had considered a taller tower to encourage co-location from other telecommunications companies.
"I think this is a place where a tower is part of a hamlet," he said.
APA board member Fredrick Monroe, designee as executive director of the Local Government Review Board, said APA's regulatory stance on tower height has become confusing.
In some locations, APA has preferred a series of short towers to accommodate different carriers, such as the site at the northbound High Peaks rest area on I-87 and in Chesterfield where two towers have been built on private lands around Poke-O-Moonshine to cover a northern stretch of the Northway and Route 9.
Monroe suggested APA set priorities and outline clearly "what trumps what" in towers policy review.
"I don't think a clear message has been sent."
Commissioner James Townsend defended the review process to date, saying APA has sent a clear message, approving a series of smaller, hidden towers on the I-87 corridor.
But review takes a different tack when towers are located in densely settled hamlet areas, suggested Commissioner Arthur Lussi, who's family business concern at Crowne Plaza Resort in Lake Placid has long hosted an array of telecommunications equipment.
When it comes to considering a hamlet tower, Lussi said, "our policy needs to be tweaked. We should be much more amenable to taller towers."
"In a hamlet you have a different (developed) context," Booth said.
Verizon Wireless has not announced a timetable yet for construction of the Keene Valley tower.
But the company built and activated another 89-foot tower about three miles east last fall in the hamlet of Keene.
The structure is hidden against a wooded hill in the highway sand pit. The signal does not reach more than about two miles in either direction on Route 73 and does not provide a continuous Verizon Wireless signal through the narrow Cascade Pass, the main corridor from I-87 north to Lake Placid.
E-mail Kim Smith Dedam at: kdedam@pressrepublican.com
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