Prevent tower blight
While whiz kids of the 21st century’s new
telecommunications technologies develop new gadgets with lightning speed, communities have
been sluggish in dealing with the most visible symbols of those technologies, transmission
towers.
Towers have been denounced as everything from threats to health to
offensive visual pollution wherever they’ve been planned or constructed--and the Wood
River Valley is not to be denied its moment of controversy.
However, if Americans expect to benefit from new wireless communications
in business as well in their everyday personal routines, some form of transmission
facilities is inevitable.
Until technology discovers ways of micro-sizing transmission towers, the
objective now should be to find ways of making those facilities compatible with a
community’s other demands.
That challenge has landed squarely in the laps of the Hailey City Council,
the Bellevue City Council and the Blaine County Commission, all on notice that a new
player in the Wood River Valley’s growing wireless communications business wants to
build a tower—and that others may follow.
VoiceStream has indicated that if Bellevue nixes permission for a tower,
the company will find a site in the unincorporated area of Blaine County.
But VoiceStream isn’t apt to find an especially hospitable reception
anywhere in the immediate area.
Monday night, Hailey enacted an emergency moratorium on tower
construction. Bellevue and the county commission also seem ready to declare a time-out on
granting a permit for a wireless tower.
VoiceStream is only one of an army of wireless communications firms
organized to handle the explosive market of telephones, palm data units, wireless
computers, pagers and as-yet undeveloped new gadgets.
The transmission devices for various wireless services cannot be grouped
in the commonly seen "tower farms." So as not to be overrun by numerous
unsightly towers, the valley’s governments must come up with firm siting policies
that force wireless communications companies to come up with structures that are
harmonious with the valley’s beautiful landscape.
Towers up to 200 feet in height are simply unacceptable in a valley that
values its landscapes.
Companies could be required to camouflage transmission towers, or to mount
them upon existing structures, like power poles, where they would not be readily noticed.
Not only must the companies offer innovative technology, they must offer
innovative siting alternatives. Seems like all the brain power behind them should be able
to do that.
By whatever method, transmission towers need to be controlled before they
become a blight on the landscape. Bellevue, Hailey and Blaine County officials have been
presented with an opportunity to pause and consider far-reaching options that can
accommodate transmission towers while preserving the area’s love affair with an
uncluttered visual environment.
