HARDWICK, Vt.-Even on a miserable, rainy day in March, this small New England state of maple syrup, cheddar cheese, splendid ski resorts and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream whispers a uniquely American native beauty.
In trying to capture Vermont, the Almanac of American Politics latched onto the prophetic 1940ish words of author Dorothy Canfield Fisher: “Vermont represents the past, is a piece of the past in the midst of the present and future.”
Wireless carriers know this all too well.
Here is the home to generations of dairy farmers and aging hippies from New York. On the other hand, Rudyard Kipling and Aleksander Solzenitsyn left Vermont unhappy campers.
Thrift and self-reliance are hallmarks of a state where the people and their land are one. In this neck of the woods, known as New England, fighting to the death for self-rule and democratic representation has a long, proud history. These are the last of the Mohicans.
It is not by historic accident that Vermont has become the symbolic national battleground for antenna siting.
It is not by happenstance, either that the Vermont congressional delegation chose to have a town meeting in Hardwick, a small town ready to go to war with Bell Atlantic Mobile over a proposed cellular tower on its beloved Buffalo Mountain-the town icon and image source.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Bill Kennard could have gone to Burlington or some other Vermont town where mobile phone companies have successfully collocated antennas for wireless systems.
But he was invited to Hardwick, an obvious hot spot, where he could witness himself the outrage of citizens, decked out in L.L. Bean couture, who object to what Kennard calls the heavy hand of government.
That is why there is Act 250, a 1970 law then-Vermont Attorney General James Jeffords penned to give citizens a say in protecting the environment against unfettered commercial activity.
But Kennard, Sens. Jeffords (R-Vt.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), also heard from a nurse, a detective and others who said environmentalism cannot be the ueber alles (overall) of Vermont antenna siting policy. Mobile phones, they said, are needed for medical emergencies and other public-safety functions. Keep Vermont beautiful, yes, these folks said, but also wake up to the 21st century.
Indeed, driving on winding roads across brooks and streams and through rolling hills peppered with trees, one realizes modern life has not altogether escaped Vermont. There are roads and 75-foot telephone poles with lines that bring citizens landline telephone service. Still, no billboards.
Mobile-phone towers are something else. Vermonters have not completely accepted this communications revolution that official wireless is so proud of. Just why, one man asked, is it so important that there be a seamless nationwide network? If you believe in competition, why, the man asked of Kennard, did you approve the Bell Atlantic-Nynex merger?
Another man, Dale Newton, who with his wife, Janet, made a federal issue of antenna siting upon learning after the fact that Bell Atlantic wanted to build a 120-foot tower near his house in Cabot. He was tipped off by spikes in sugar maple trees.
“You damn well better believe it was a declaration of war,” he thundered in the packed Hazen Union High School auditorium.
Kennard, for his part, repeated his jelling policy that federal pre-emption of local zoning authority be considered only as a last resort. He punctuated that with his view that local and state officials should have a strong role in zoning matters.
But he cautioned that the federal government would rear its ugly head if local zoning boards keep antenna towers from being erected. Yet, a simple reading between the lines makes it abundantly clear that a federal pre-emption solution for antenna moratoria is no longer in the cards, if it ever was.
Kennard, unlike his predecessor, has become personally engaged in the antenna siting debate. He has turned the FCC into a facilitator, with himself being the honest broker. Kennard is not convinced the wireless industry is negotiating in good faith at all times with local zoning czars.
In fact, Kennard said he doesn’t believe antenna siting is the national problem decried by the wireless industry. Thus, he is not about to issue a broad federal pre-emption edict to solve the antenna siting problems of a handful. It is wishful thinking for the industry to believe otherwise.
Then again, antenna siting moratoria do exist and the federal government, which has pocketed billions from wireless license sales, cannot simply sit on the sidelines. If may not be enough to be facilitator; the FCC might also have to help find the solution.
The wireless industry was never going to defeat Vermont on this issue. Well-heeled firms like Bell Atlantic, AT&T Corp., AirTouch Communications Inc. and Sprint Corp. are simply no match for citizen activists who will be pulling voting machine levers in November.
All tower siting, like politics, is local. The wireless industry and its Capitol Hill allies cannot hope to dictate a solution to siting moratoria from official Washington.
To have any chance of success on the siting issue, the industry will have to send foot soldiers outside the Beltway to make the case for wireless technology’s public-safety and social benefits. The industry must become local activists and good listeners.
Short of that, carriers will find themselves on the losing end of more grass- roots uprisings like the one that Hardwick made famous last week.
