Foster's Daily Democrat, Dover, N.H., Thursday, April 16,1998
By DAVID WARREN
Rochester Bureau Chief
ROCHESTER - City Planners have introduced an ordinance aimed at preventing battles over wireless communication towers from being played out here.
The proposed ordinance would regulate, among other things, the licensing, placement and height of the towers. Planner Tim Thompson, who presented the proposal Wednesday evening to three City Council subcommittees, said the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 effectively deregulated the paging and cellular phone industries, resulting in greater demand for wireless towers.
It's actually antennas that transmit cell phone signals, but the towers are needed to place the antennas high enough to clear natural or man-made obstructions like mountains or high-rise buildings.
Thompson said after Wednesday's meeting that many New England towns are now contending with wireless towers, and that the issue was particularly volatile in Londonderry because officials there introduced the first municipal ordinance in the state regulating the towers.
Thompson was actually the architect of that ordinance and is largely responsible for the draft presented to city councilors who comprise the economic development, codes and ordinances, and the technology committees.
Much of the criticism of the towers centers around their obtrusiveness and the ability of phone companies to erect them with little interference from municipalities. Coastal towns in Maine a few years ago played out the controversy, with residents complaining the towers were eyesores along the coastline and the phone companies countering the towers were a safety net for stranded boaters who used cell phones to call for help.
Locally, a lawsuit has been filed as a result of a tower on Blue Job Mountain in Farmington.
Telecommunication companies today are more often signing leases with churches and other organizations so antennas can be places in church steeples, billboards or atop tall buildings - thereby avoiding the need for towers.
Thompson said the city was recently approached by a company asking if it could place an antenna on the roof of City Hall for a monthly fee of about $1,200.
He said the Planning Department has been mulling an ordinance for about a year, and the one before the council subcommittees will allow for the installation of a tower only on industrially zoned land. The proposed ordinance would further try to reduce the number of towers by clumping multiple users onto one tower.
Most towers in the state have an average height of 150 to 200 feet, said Thompson.
Technology is advancing so rapidly, he said, the day may soon come when cellular phone transmissions are done using satellites - making the towers obsolete. Therefore, his ordinance includes an abandonment provision stipulating that if a tower is no longer being used, it must be taken down.
There are currently two wireless towers in the city - one is near the intersection of Route 125 and the Spaulding Turnpike in Gonic and the other is off Route 202A - and they're owned by the Sprint phone company. According to Thompson, there are only 5 ideal locations in Rochester. But, he warned, in addition to those five, major travel routes such as the turnpike are popular locations for towers.
Councilor Walter Hoerman, who chairs the economic development committee, was largely supportive of the ordinance, but wants clearer language that would prevent towers from being built too close together.
Thompson will be making modifications to the ordinance, and the subcommittees will probably discuss the proposal again before a public hearing in either May or June. The full council would then vote on whether to adopt the ordinance.