Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Safety and scenery, too


The decision by the U.S. Forest Service to reject a 90-foot mono-pine "stealth" cell tower on Galena Summit doesn't mean cell service long nearby State Highway 75 and the Smiley Creek area is impossible.

It's possible to protect scenery and improve safety, too.

Sawtooth National Forest Supervisor Jane Kollmeyer rightly rejected the weakly disguised tower in the context of the law that created the SNRA and within standards set out under that law to protect visual resources in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area.

Kollmeyer said the tower would have dominated the landscape of the south entrance to the Sawtooth Valley and impaired the experience of nearly 6,000 people who visit the summit in the winter.

The decision made it clear that the Forest Service understands the need for a new communications facility to serve the relatively remote area. In fact, Kollmeyer found that from a safety standpoint the facility would be appropriate.

However, the law compelled her to balance that with protection of the scenic vistas within the SNRA that the public has paid millions to restore and protect.

The trick to getting safety and scenery will be to install unobtrusive cellular transmission facilities. A series of shorter poles with fixed antennas or better disguised towers could transmit signals as effectively as a single tower installation.

With the Forest Service, interested cell service providers should figure out what would work to improve emergency communications in the relatively remote area while continuing to protect the SNRA's scenic vistas.




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