Faulty towers

Residents of Whiting are understandably upset about a marine communications company’s plans to erect a 330-foot-high tower in their town. Their concerns about intrusive lights blinking day and night, the possibility that space on the VHF tower could be leased for microwave transmissions, aesthetic issues and diminished property values are legitimate.

The company, MariTEL, is understandably determined to build this tower, along with six others in Maine and a total of 268 along the entire country’s coastline. MariTEL is under contract with the U.S. Coast Guard to develop a nationwide ship-to-shore telecommunications system that can reach 50 miles out to sea. It is an important project that can save lives.

MariTEL can expect this conflict between local concerns and the broader public good in just about every one of the 268 communities it must deal with. Add to that the thousands of super-tall towers (up to 1,500 feet) being built for the conversion to digital television, add to that the thousands of cell towers being built to satisfy the unquenchable thirst for wireless communications and it’s not hard to imagine the entire American horizon soon resembling the roofscape of 1950s suburbia. The need for a coherent and comprehensive national policy on telecommunications towers is long overdue.

National policy as it exists today essentially consists of stomping out local brush fires and stepping on local toes. When communities across the country first began registering complaints about the towering digital-TV towers headed their way, the Federal Communications Commission responded by simply enacting rules that declared local zoning ordinances null and void — a serious usurpation of local control that once was used only for emergency communications applications was extended to the entertainment industry.

The fundamental problem is that the FCC regulates each communications sector under its purview as a separate and distinct universe — there is no connection between television, radio, cell and wireless data. When the cooperative siting of towers to accommodate all needs, to reduce clutter and threats to air safety, and to reduce costs to consumers and taxpayers does occur, it is more by chance than by design.

There already are, for example, extremely tall communications towers within shouting distance of Whiting — at the Cutler Navy base and at Maine Public Television’s station in Charlotte, which soon will have an even taller tower with the conversion to digital. There may be an easy answer as to why one of these installations could not be host to the MariTEL project, but odds are the FCC hasn’t even asked the question.