The East Hampton Town Planning Board came close to scheduling a public hearing on an application for the relocation of a 150-foot communications tower at the Springs Firehouse on Fort Pond Boulevard last week. Instead, despite pressure from Elite Towers, the applicant, the board decided one more meeting was necessary.
The fire department was granted permits for a 150-foot-tall tower in 2014, but they were revoked in 2015, after the tower was already built. It has never been operational. In the last 10 years there have been lawsuits, code changes, and political battles fought with the tower as a main character in the drama.
Elite Towers was asked to make a few minor tweaks, mainly to a landscaping plan, before the hearing could be scheduled. It is now proposing screening an equipment shed with 38 arborvitaes. The board wanted more.
“There are picnic tables. They have barbecues back there. I mean, you guys shouldn’t do it on the cheap. You should go and do the right thing,” said Michael Hansen, a board member.
“Make it pretty,” agreed Jennifer Fowkes, who served as chairwoman of the board in the absence of Ed Krug.
While it seemed that things were close to settling, even though it wasn’t a public hearing, Richard Whalen, a local attorney representing nearby neighbors, spoke in strong opposition.
For him, the biggest issue had nothing to do with landscaping, and more to do with the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act.
While the planning board is treating the current application as a new application, Mr. Whalen argued that instead, it should be seen as a continuation of a previously submitted, and withdrawn, application for a nearly 200-foot tower on the same property.
“You should not even be discussing this,” he said. The planning board had decided that the previous plans would require extensive environmental review in 2020, “and you accepted a scoping outline in 2021. It’s the same project. The fact that they withdrew the application and submitted a new application is utterly meaningless.”
“I’m asking you to tell the applicant they are still required under your decision in 2020 and this 2021 scoping outline, that they submitted and you accepted, that they have to submit a D.E.I.S.” he said. “If you don’t do that, I have to tell you and I’ll tell the applicants’ attorneys, we will assert our rights in court.”
However, Eric Schantz, a principal planner for the town’s Planning Department, and in fact, the entire planning board, disagreed, citing differences such as tower height (now 150 feet), location (now centered on the property), and deign (stealth monopole versus externally mounted antennas).
Mr. Schantz said he would “defer entirely to the town attorney’s office” on the matter but that he had conferred with them already and they felt the application was “substantially different from the one that precedes it.”
The proposed “stealth” monopole, so named because it conceals all antennas within the structure, would include equipment for Verizon, T-Mobile, Dish Network, and emergency communication services for the fire department. While the pole is technically outside of regulated historic and scenic zones, it is close enough to warrant concern.
The pole will sit at the center of the fire department property, maximizing distance from property lines. The current pole rises close to a property line.
However, balloon tests conducted on April 23 revealed that the tower would be visible, in full, or partially obscured, from numerous nearby roads.
“The tower would be substantially visible from various locations on Fort Pond Boulevard, Springs-Fireplace Road, and Talmage Farm Lane,” said Mr. Schantz. Views of the top of the structure would also extend to Gerard and Louse Points.
He indicated that while there were a number of active applications for “small cell” towers in the area, propagation maps indicated “You’re not going to be able to fill the entire coverage gap with just small cell.” He said a tower was necessary.
“This is absolutely, 100 percent needed,” agreed Ms. Fowkes. “This is one of the most wealthy and wonderful places in the world and we can’t make a phone call.”
Although not within designated avoidance zones under the town code, the site sits just outside key thresholds: approximately 690 feet from the Springs Historic District, 925 feet from the Pollock-Krasner House (a National Register of Historic Places site), and 900 feet from a Scenic Area of Statewide Significance near Accabonac Harbor.
If the pole were located within 500 feet of any of those assets, they would have been flagged for listing on the environmental assessment form. Nonetheless, Mr. Schantz requested that Elite Towers list them, to clearly reflect nearby historic resources.
“You’ll need to have a discussion about whether or not the visibility and the negative impacts that come from it, supersede the applicant’s efforts to mitigate those impacts and the community need for a utility of this kind,” he told the board.
Once a revised environmental assessment form and enhanced landscaping plans are submitted, the board seemed amenable and even eager to schedule a public hearing. In the meantime, the regulatory “shot clock,” a federal requirement to process wireless applications within 150 days, has been paused.
That seemed like a minor detail for an application that has been in front of the town, in one form or other, for over a decade.
The planning board’s last review was on April 2. The town’s architectural review board will also review the application, but it will only focus on “coloration and design elements,” said Mr. Schantz.
