WASHINGTON and DALLAS-Even as several entities signed a nationwide agreement meant to streamline tower sitings, tribal lands are exempt from the rules, thus leading some critics to say the pact isn’t streamlined enough.
The Federal Communications Commission, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers Oct. 4 signed the Nationwide Programmatic Agreement meant to streamline tower sitings.
“This makes this all about tribal consultation because all of the streamlining efforts do not include the tribes,” said John Clark, counsel for the Tower Siting Policy Alliance. “Tower owners and carriers will still need to consult with tribes on the visual effects of towers on lands of cultural or historical significance to tribes. Right now, 95 to 98 percent of tribes do not respond. According to the agreement, the FCC will have to step in.”
The FCC went to great lengths to show that it was preserving the government-to-government relationship required when dealing with Native American tribes.
“The FCC must consider the impact of its undertakings on historic properties, including those sites to which federally recognized Indian tribes (including Alaska Native Villages) and Native Hawaiian Organizations attach religious or cultural significance,” said FCC Chairman Michael Powell and FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein in a joint statement.
An industry panel discussed the tribal provisions at last week’s Tower Summit sponsored by PCIA.
“Who negotiated with the Indians anyway that they got all of this stuff in there? It is a joke. We sold out to the Indians,” said one participant in the audience.
Panel members were quick to distance themselves from the audience member.
“I don’t know that every tribe is champing at the bit to prevent every siting. This is the most restrictive section of the document, but I don’t know how significant the day-to-day impact will be,” said David Jermakian, president of Dynamic Environmental.
The NPA is a follow-up to a similar programmatic agreement signed in March 2001 for colocations. The wireless industry and the historic preservation community started negotiating tower sitings in 2000 with the hope of establishing an NPA in a year. It took more than a year to complete the interim agreement on colocations and another three years to complete the final agreement.
“We were contemplating something similar to the scenic trails resolution, but at the end of the day and 180 pages later, here we are,” said Andrea Williams, assistant general counsel for the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association.
Williams said the tribal provisions might be hard to implement.
“On paper, this may look very simplistic but I am very concerned about how this is going to work out in the field,” said Williams. “If the FCC becomes involved at the 11th hour, there needs to be some time limits.”
Williams could not say when or even if CTIA would seek reconsideration of the tribal portions. Last month when the FCC announced it had adopted the NPA rules, the wireless trade group indicated it plans to appeal because it believes that the FCC does not have jurisdiction over most wireless facilities.
“The radical argument that we should abandon our protection of historic places would not only result in irreparable damage to historic American communities throughout the country, but it is also inconsistent with our obligations under the National Historic Preservation Act,” said FCC Commissioner Michael Copps.
