Residents fight planned call towers as view blockers

Officials say emergency communications system needs update for safety

Sunday, Feb. 3, 2008

By Marcie Young
Charlotte Observer Staff Writer

LENOIR -- A plan that would allow law enforcement and emergency workers to respond more quickly to calls is meeting strong opposition from some residents who don't want to see communication towers from their porches.

The Caldwell County Sheriff's Office has asked commissioners to finalize a plan to build a five-tower emergency communications system that would allow rescue workers and law enforcement to talk in even the most remote regions of the county.

As more people moved into isolated areas of the county, and trees and foliage have grown taller, emergency officials have encountered more problems reaching responders in those areas.

"Radio waves sometimes don't like to go around things," said Richard Jenkins, Sheriff's Office communications director. "And, now, there are fire departments out there that are only reaching about half of their (responders). This is not something we just choose to do - it's something we've needed to do for several years."

But the plan, which includes building a tower on St. Mark's Church Road near Blowing Rock, has received strong criticism from residents who say the proposed 195-foot structure would lessen property values and taint the view from their homes and from the Blue Ridge Parkway.

"We're promoting the high country as being a gateway to the mountains," Denise Drum, who lives on St. Mark's Church Road, said at last week's commissioners meeting. "Don't kill our golden egg with (putting) towers in our beautiful hiking areas."

About a dozen residents of the Blackberry community, where one of the towers would be built, asked commissioners to consider other options, including building more, smaller towers or building on top of the water tower in Blowing Rock instead.

Jenkins said planners and consultants from Motorola, the company building the towers, said the Blowing Rock water tower was the preferred option. But town officials did not support the proposal, so the county did not make a formal request.

They also exhausted several options for other sites, he said, and found that only a few that would allow the system to work properly.

The St. Mark's Church Road site, he said, would bring better coverage to the east and west sides of the county, including Happy Valley and Collettsville, which are surrounded by mountains and often get spotty transmission.

"It's the prime site that will cover both of those areas," he said. "I can't argue that we couldn't do this with smaller towers, but we would need 10 or 20 times the number of towers to (make this system work). It's just not practical to cover the county in dozens of 110-foot towers."

The five towers, some of which are already built, will be scattered throughout Caldwell, and three, including the St. Mark's Church Road tower, will be on private land leased by the county, Jenkins said. The towers need to be built high enough, Jenkins said, that signals can be sent between each structure and cover the entire county.

It would also allow the county to operate on the state's Viper system, which allows every county in North Carolina to communicate.

Commissioner John Thuss said he understand that nobody wants to see towers marking the county's landscape, he also said the need for emergency officials to communicate is paramount.

"This is about people's lives, whether it be tracking a criminal or getting someone to the hospital," he said. "This is not about cell phones and people being interrupted as they go up and down the mountain."

Previous battles
This isn't the first time Caldwell County commissioners have battled residents opposing 250-foot communications towers. In 1999, when residents argued that cell phone towers would taint the view from their Blowing Rock porches and lessen property values, the county froze construction and looked at regulations that would dictate cell phone tower height, as well as distance from property lines and other towers.

In 2000, after six months of heated debate with some residents, commissioners adopted an ordinance that required cell phone towers to be no taller than 110 feet and strongly encouraged "concealment" technology, which could include putting communication devices on top of steeples, water towers and flag poles and areas within a quarter-mile of a residential zone.

The proposed plan to build five emergency communication towers, commissioners said, is not meant to improve commercial cell phone service and, therefore, not bound by the 2000 ordinance.

Where are the towers?
Three of the five new towers have already been built: a 450-foot tower at the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office in Lenoir, a 270-foot tower on Hibriten Mountain, and one on top of the Granite Falls water tower, which reaches a total height of 150 feet.

The Sheriff's Office has also recommended the county build a 195-foot tower on St. Mark's Church Road and one on Butte Mountain, on Zack's Fork Road, that would not exceed 200 feet.

The project will cost $6.5 million. Four of the towers would be owned by the county, and the Butte Mountain tower would be owned by the state, which will invest $1.1 million in the project in Caldwell County, Jenkins said.

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