There is no way around it: Cellphone towers are ugly and few property owners want them in their immediate neighborhood. Yet Americans have become dependent on their phones and expect coverage except in the remotest of places. The demand, cost, and geographic factors make cell towers the industry’s preferred method of providing seamless service. The foregoing is at the center of a dispute that has pitted several residents against the Springs Fire Department, which is planning a new communications tower at its Fort Pond Boulevard firehouse. Among the objections is the location, within spitting distance of the Springs Historic District. Residents have also expressed fears that a tower might topple in a storm and damage houses and endanger lives.
It has been a decade since the fire department received building permits to allow a tower company to erect one on its property. By the time people who owned property around the tower knew, it was being built. The town zoning board of appeals revoked the permit, and by 2019, with the tower still standing and no planning approval, an online petition against it had gathered more than 1,000 names.
The controversy has boiled over now and then ever since. Now, after so many years, the proposal for a new 150-foot-tall tower in a different location is moving close to a planning board hearing. However, the matter may end up before a judge soon. An attorney for some Springs Fire Department neighbors insists that a detailed study be completed first. The planners had ordered a State Environmental Quality Review Act examination of the tower’s pros and cons about five years ago; in the present matter, the planning board did not ask for an intensive SEQRA process.
Not only does the lack of a communications tower impact first responders, but Springs residents and visitors have had to deal with weak or nonexistent cell service since the technology was introduced. Making the situation more acute, popular streaming sites and social media videos put a massive demand on wireless infrastructure. To cope with the demand, cell companies often resort to “throttling” some users to keep the networks efficient and to cut back on customer complaints. In the fine print, T-Mobile’s customer agreement says that “data prioritization” will only be noticeable when a customer accesses a congested tower and has used over 50GB of data in a single billing cycle, for example. Less-visible alternatives, such as transmitters mounted on existing utility poles, do not provide adequate service in parts of town where houses are spread widely. Height, it seems, is a necessary evil.
Hopefully, the Springs Fire Department tower will not be there forever. New technologies may make cell service broadly available without the need for such eyesores. Right now, however, towers are the go-to choice, like them or not. In the end, the site in the middle of the Fire Department property allows for an acceptable compromise for a service, one that nearly all of us expect these days.