WASHINGTON-Finishing guidelines to facilitate antenna sitings on park property, The National Park Service stopped short of presuming that antennas can be sited without harming NPS lands.
Instead, NPS decided each application must be reviewed individually, including applications for collocation.
“The good news is that they have clarified things but … are these guidelines going to be used to [encourage] or thwart [antenna sitings],” said Tim Ayers, vice president for communications for the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
The wireless industry had encouraged NPS to establish the presumption that antennas could be sited without harming NPS lands.
“Placement of a[n antenna] site near commercial or maintenance facilities does not automatically mean that there will be no visual intrusion or impacts on historic or cultural resources generated from the height of the [towers],” the guidelines said.
NPS established a proposed time line to consider completed applications but did not “feel it [was] necessary to set forth time frames for the entire permitting process.”
The lack of wireless facilities cannot be argued to be a public-safety hazard in an effort to speed up the permitting process, NPS said. This issue has been one of the main arguments in the ongoing exchange between Bell Atlantic Mobile and the park service. BAM has been attempting to place two towers in Rock Creek Park, an urban Washington, D.C., park, for more than four years. The Park Police urged its parent agency to approve the towers, citing safety concerns that people in the park cannot contact emergency personnel on wireless phones because there are dead areas.
An environmental assessment is being conducted on the BAM application.
CTIA has been citing Rock Creek Park as an example of NPS foot-dragging since December 1996 when CTIA sent a letter to President Clinton asking him to spur NPS and other federal agencies to site wireless facilities on federal lands.
The wireless industry generally has complained the park service has not been consistent in applying siting rules among the various NPS units. NPS hopes to alleviate that by issuing guidelines on antenna sitings to be used by all NPS units. These guidelines, which were revised at least once and received public input earlier this year, were signed off and distributed earlier this month, according to an NPS official overseeing the project.