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Neighbors Force Sprint to Withdraw Tower Application
EASTON: “Everyone but Sprint seemed to understand that industrial communications towers don’t belong in residential neighborhoods, so we had to spell it out for them”, New Haven Attorney Keith Ainsworth said following notification of Sprint’s withdrawal of a controversial application for a 150-foot cellular tower on Burr Street in Easton. The Connecticut Siting Council application was the second attempt of an earlier application to the Easton Planning and Zoning Commission Sprint made in 2001. That application was denied unanimously despite the location being the residence of one of the Commission’s members, Ronald Kowalski. The application drew a great deal of attention throughout the region as it came to light that Mr. Kowalski, a lawyer, worked for a firm that worked for Sprint. Unfortunately, the decisions of Easton's local officials on this important matter now face the very real threat of being overruled by the Connecticut Siting Council, a state agency whose recent history demonstrates a bias for big business and a disregard for the interests of individual citizens and local communities. “We’re elated. The message couldn’t be more clear”, said Bruce DeCourt, manager for the Aspetuck Woods Preservation Group (AWPG), the grassroots environmental organization which opposed the choice to site a tower near residential property. “After almost three years of demonstrating how environmentally unsound the site was, I think they finally got the message”, DeCourt continued. The AWPG’s success is impressive given the Siting Council’s routine approval of such towers. Keith Ainsworth credited the group’s strategy of demonstrating how Sprint had failed to meet several critical prerequisites to obtaining a permit: that there were multiple less harmful alternative sites and technologies, that the “need” for the tower was more of corporate convenience to Sprint than to fill signal gaps, which Sprint had previously reported to the FCC as completed, and that the site was on a tributary feeding Hemlocks Reservoir public drinking water supply, and mere feet from thousands of acres of Kelda lands recently protected by the Department of Environmental Protection. The AWPG also had garnered support in opposition to the tower from Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, Congressman Christopher Shays, Sen. John McKinney and Rep. John Stripp, the First Selectmen of Easton, Westport and Weston, and actor/conservationist Paul Newman. By the time of Sprint’s withdrawal the application had become the subject regional and national media, and was well-known to the Siting Council and in industry circles as a “marked” application. After three years of activist linking of conflict of interest problems, Sprint insider favoritism, permanent environmental harm and corporate greed, the application symbolized the growing public frustration caused by increasing number of applications for wireless communications towers in unsuitable marginal locations. A public ever increasing appetite for wireless communication capacity was used to justify new towers in places like the residential and historic neighborhood on Burr Street, a designated scenic road. The clash was inevitable and likely to occur in many more neighborhoods. Environmental harm clearly outweighed Sprint’s undocumented claims of “public need” in this case. “Those defects in the application were always there”, noted an exasperated DeCourt. “Sprint was either incompetent or in bad faith when it applied. If ordinary citizens could find better locations why couldn’t a multi-billion dollar multi-national corporation like Sprint?” DeCourt went on to note that Sprint represented to the Siting Council in its application that it was unable to present a single viable alternative for the Council’s review after an “exhaustive search to find a suitable candidate”. He added “This time corporate greed, insider deals and blatant disregard for residents and local zoning met with stubborn, informed neighbors determined not to be steamrollered.” DeCourt restated his resolve and that of the AWPG saying, “I’m relieved but not really surprised they withdrew. They would have lost on the merits of the case. We will fight them again with three times the effort if they came back again.” |