Did the latest cell tower article catch your attention? The misleading title caught mine. It should read "Old law still blocks Galena cell tower."
Forest Service officials are not creating new rules, just applying good old Public Law 92-400, which established the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in 1971 and still directs the Forest Service "to assure the preservation of, and to protect the scenic, historic, pastoral, fish and wildlife, and other recreational values of the Sawtooth Mountains and adjacent lands ..." Beginning 1972, to protect SNRA scenery, the Forest Service meticulously mapped the visual qualities of the SNRA as seen by viewers/recreationists along travel routes.
Of several cross-referential visual elements mapped, "viewer sensitivity level"—the critical component that accounts for you—has continually, significantly increased in the area surrounding the denied tower location. Scenery map updates are long overdue, but the Forest Service wisely spends tax dollars updating maps/plans to reflect current uses typically when project proposals arise that would affect a protected area. When the Forest Service determined that a multitude of diverse viewers had been visiting Galena ridge since the original visual maps were completed, it was obligated to amend the ridge map to "highest viewer sensitivity level" before properly analyzing the true impacts of tower development on scenery. The Forest Service was doing its job.
Do you get client opinion to sharpen your work tools before proceeding? That's what Kollmeyer's now asked to do—get your permission for having updated visual tools that soundly demonstrate tower project denial. The Forest Service is not actively blocking cellular access, it has appropriately denied one mega-tower development at one particular location, incidentally the only site the applicant offered. The Forest Service proposes no new "plan that would make [anything] harder;" it's a justifiable update to working maps to keep fresh an existing forest plan.
The visual amendment is 'non-significant'; it merely reflects actual visitors viewing a stellar SNRA gateway. To reaffirm Kollmeyer's appropriate action and support her in exercising the Forest Service's responsibility to protect your scenic resources, call (208)737-3200.
Denise Jackson Ford
Hailey
