Industry Asks FCC for More Detail on Wireless Tower Environmental Assessment
A group representing the leading industry players on tower siting asked the FCC to provide additional detail on what the commission is considering in a programmatic environmental assessment (PEA) on the antenna structure registration program. The FCC is examining its tower siting rules in response to a February 2008 remand from the U.S. Coyurt of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (CD Feb 20/08 p2). The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, meanwhile, proposed several steps the FCC could take to curb bird deaths from collisions with towers.
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"The Commission has provided little or no information about what specific data the Commission and its consultant will consider or how they plan to analyze the data,” said a filing by CTIA, the NAB, the PCIA and the National Association of Tower Erectors. The FCC also hasn’t said what “outcomes” are under consideration, the industry groups said. The commission is correct to conduct a PEA, but must supply details on what it is looking at, the groups said.
"In the absence of any meaningful delineation of the scope of the PEA, the public simply cannot provide meaningful comment,” the industry commenters said. “For public participation to be feasible and useful, the Commission needs to provide notice of what it plans to consider, just as it must do so in a notice of proposed rulemaking.” The coalition also questioned whether studies of bird deaths and wind turbines should be considered as part of the record. Towers and turbines “are fundamentally different in construction, configuration, operation, and lighting,” it said.
The groups offered a statement by Gino Giumarro, a wildlife biologist and consultant, about how PEAs have been done in other industries. He said the tower PEA is unusually contentious. “The scoping information provided by FCC … to date has not provided specific alternatives or proposed action for which to provide substantive comments,” Giumarro said. “Therefore, it is difficult to frame the context regarding the normality of this” National Environmental Policy Act scoping.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has urged the FCC since 1999 to work with its staff in the development of a programmatic environmental impact statement on communications towers, the agency said in comments it filed. It cited several studies of bird deaths caused by communications towers, including one submitted last week (CD Jan 18 p 8).
The FCC can take several steps to reduce deaths, the service said, starting with a phase-out of FL-810 steady-burning red lights in favor of “minimum intensity, maximum ‘off'-phased red strobe (or strobe-like), white strobe or red blinking incandescent lights.” Where possible, the commission should limit tower heights to 200 feet, since taller towers appear to kill more birds, the wildlife service said. It said the FCC should also require that towers be removed within a year of becoming inactive. The commission could require tower companies to avoid tower construction “in or adjacent to wetlands and other areas where birds concentrate in large numbers or where listed, imperiled, or disturbance-sensitive birds are present.” The service also recommended that the FCC require tower operators to monitor and report bird deaths. “Such reporting could help better understand when and where mass mortality events occur, and begin to better determine cumulative effects.”