ADIRONDACK PARK AGENCY
STAFF TORCHES "FRANKENPINE" PLANNED FOR HISTORIC LAKE GEORGE SHORELINE
Board of Commissioners Will Make Final Decision
at July Meeting
For more information or copy
of the APA hearing staff brief:
John F. Sheehan, Communications Director
518-432-1770 (work)
518-441-1340 (cell)
518-456-4512 (home)
jsheehan@adirondackcouncil.org.
Released, Monday, May 22, 2005
FORT ANN, NY - After a long and
often contentious battle between environmentalists and cell phone
tower builders, the Adirondack Park Agency's public hearing staff
has recommended that the Agency reject a plan to build a fake
pine tree cell tower on an undeveloped hillside overlooking Lake
George.
"We are very pleased with the hearing staff's recommendation,"
said Adirondack Council Executive Director Brian L. Houseal.
"We urge the commissioners to take their advice to reject
this Frankenpine."
"We have come a long way in the past three years,"
Houseal said. "When this project was first proposed, the
APA's staff recommended approving an even taller tower than this
104-foot, steel and plastic monstrosity. We and several others
intervened in the case and urged the commissioners to take a
second, harder look at the tower. The commissioners heard our
concerns and ordered a full-fledged adjudicatory public hearing.
That gave us a chance to prove that the applicants - Nextel Partners
and IWO, which is affiliated with Sprint - had misrepresented
many of the so-called facts of the case.
"When we first got involved, Nextel had already rolled over
the town's residential zoning plan in state court, and was looking
unstoppable. But the staff recommendation is a major turning
point in this case. It looks like the momentum is finally moving
back in the right direction," he said.
"We worked with the Fort Ann Town Board, PROTECT of Pilot
Knob and other local residents, as well as the Lake George Waterkeeper
and RCPA, to dissect and examine the applicants' claims,"
Houseal explained. He said the Council and its co-interveners
had submitted evidence showing:
- The applicants had already improved
their service in the area of the tower without getting a Park
Agency permit, by placing cell phone equipment on the Sagamore
Hotel in Bolton Landing in 2004;
- That the applicants had not
disclosed to the Park Agency the existence of another transmitter
on the Sagamore golf course. The hearing judge had to issue a
subpoena to document its existence;
- Tower construction and clearing
for the access road would cause water pollution in nearby wetlands
and eventually to Lake George.
- The applicants had never considered
several obvious alternatives to a highly-visible, stand-alone
tower including sites that would provide better coverage.
- Several local landowners were
willing to host cell phone equipment on existing buildings, where
they would be virtually invisible, but were never approached
by the applicants.
- The designer of the fake pine
tree camouflage for the Frankenpine tower had admitted it was
never meant to resemble a white pine (directly contradicting
the applicants' claims) but was instead a set of fiberglass branches
with 8-inch-long needles arranged in bunches of several hundred
per clump, which would not resemble any known tree species in
North America.
- The fake tree will be highly
visible from a popular hiking area on the state forest preserve
to the east, Stewarts Ledge, and visible from Lake George by
hundreds of thousands of tourists and boaters.
- The planned merger between Nextel
and Sprint this summer may eliminate the need for the tower entirely.
"We were very pleased to
see that the APA staff members who participated in the hearings
identified many of the same problems we did," Houseal said.
"Our concerns echoed throughout their brief to the senior
staff. One of the sections is even titled 'IT'S NOT EVEN A FRANKENPINE.'"
Senior staff will review the hearing record and other information
before making a final recommendation to the commissioners, prior
to their July monthly meeting.
"As you can see from our actions, we were not trying to
prevent these cell phone companies from providing service to
Lake George," Houseal explained. "We wanted to make
sure that any new commercial development remains substantially
invisible. For cell sites, that means co-location on existing
buildings in developed areas and along state highways, not stand-alone
towers in the middle of a forest."
Houseal said this case was important because it will set a precedent
for future "Frankenpine" applications all over the
Adirondack Park. The Council's two goals were to prevent damage
to Lake George's ecology and wild beauty, while preventing a
precedent that would allow the construction of other Frankenpines
in the Adirondacks. "The landscape of Pilot Knob is an icon
in American culture. It has been painted dozens of times by the
great masters of American art since the mid-1700s, and has been
photographed by thousands, perhaps millions, of visitors. It
is the reason southern Lake George's multi-level tour boats bring
more than 100,000 visitors a year past its shore. Our ancestors
had the foresight to make sure this landscape remained unchanged
for generations. It's up to us to keep it that way for our children
and grandchildren."
The final day for filing briefs in the Nextel Frankenpine case
came on Friday, May 20.
The Adirondack Council's mission is to ensure the ecological
integrity and wild character of the Adirondack Park. Founded
in 1975, the Council is a privately funded not-for-profit organization
with 18,000 members. The Council carries out its missions through
research, education, advocacy and legal action.
The Adirondack Council was represented in the case by the law
firm of Melewski & Greenwood, LLP, of Altamont, NY.
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