WASHINGTON-An environmental group told the Federal Communications Commission it must conduct a nationwide environmental impact statement before approving any more towers or risk being in violation of various environmental laws.
“The FCC must complete an environmental impact statement addressing the direct, indirect and cumulative effects of its Antennae Structure Licensing Program before issuing any additional licenses. It is beyond dispute that [the] FCC’s Antennae Structure Licensing Program has and will continue to create significant environmental impacts at the local, regional, and national level. In fact, the program meets almost every test for significance contained in the [Council on Environmental Quality’s National Environmental Policy Act] regulations. If any of these significance factors are triggered, an environmental impact statement must be prepared,” said the Friends of the Earth and the Forest Conservation Council in a petition to deny 15 towers.
The groups have filed five similar letters against a total of 33 towers.
“We have received the petitions and we are evaluating the petitions and the issues raised,” said Meribeth McCarrick, spokeswoman for the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau. McCarrick could not comment further on whether the FCC is considering stopping all tower application approvals until a nationwide environmental impact statement is completed.
“The FCC is required to strike a balance between the requirements of NEPA and the Communications Act, which calls for a pro-competitive, deregulatory framework, and includes the swift deployment of advanced telecom services. We recognize that this can be a difficult job, but we hope they continue to find a reasonable, fair and objective regulatory scheme to address these issues,” said Travis Larson, spokesman for the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association.
Some tower companies have responded to the petitions to deny by first bringing up technical legal issues and second saying the towers in question do not violate environmental laws, including NEPA, the Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Most importantly, the tower companies implore the FCC to reject the petitions to deny because to go forward with a nationwide environmental impact statement would harm the industry by causing uncertainty and delay.
“In a very competitive and rapidly developing telecommunications tower industry, where time to market is a crucial element of competitiveness and network buildout, the unnecessary delay of construction of a tower is a cause of great concern. Of course, the commission is rightly required to consider and evaluate good faith challenges to environmental compliance of its applicants. Complaints as vague, insubstantial and deficient as those in the present petition, however, are unfair, waste already-trained compliance resources of both commission and applicants and can cause serious harm to a given tower project or even to the tower industry overall, through unnecessary construction delay and regulatory uncertainty,” said SBA Tower Inc. in a response filed last month. SBA’s response echoes responses from other tower applicants.
Ironically, one of the towers being objected to does not even require FCC approval, but American Tower filed an application in anticipation of a future collocation that could increase the tower height above the 200-foot requirement, triggering an FCC review.
As the wireless industry has grown-with an estimated 116 million subscribers today-wireless carriers and tower companies have come under increased scrutiny as they attempt to build towers to accommodate the needed cell sites.
Industry, the FCC and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation recently completed an arduous process culminating in a nationwide agreement on collocations on towers on historic lands.
The collocation agreement gives amnesty to existing towers if no complaints had been received by the FCC and for towers and collocations on buildings or in areas that are not at least 45 years old. Collocations would be allowed on these structures without going through the 32-step historic preservation process. Towers built after that date would need to go through a formal historic review process including consultation with state historic preservation officers.
The groups are gearing up to put in place a similar document for new towers.
