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Politics & Government

Residents Reflect on Year of Cell Tower Opposition

Group is optimistic that Warren zoning board will end case Monday about Dock Watch Hollow Quarry in their favor.

A little more than one year after beginning their fight, Warren, Martinsville and Bridgewater residents opposed to the construction of a cell tower off Dock Watch Hollow Road said they are looking forward to an expected decision of the case at Monday's zoning board meeting.

At a gathering last week "designed to get together, chit-chat and take stock," according to Bridgewater resident Jeff Foose, one of the main organizers, there was reflection on how far the group had come and a sense that the case will end in their favor i.e., no cell tower.

"After the last meeting, I feel like the board is starting to listen to us and that something has changed," Foose said.

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At the May 1 Warren Township zoning board meeting, the applicant's attorney Greg Meese brought back radio frequency engineer Glenn Pierson to specifically testify on the feasibility of using Alcatel Lucent’s “light radio” Cube in the Dock Watch Hollow quarry, rather than a 130-foot cell tower.

Alcatel Lucent’s “light radio” shrinks a cell tower’s functionality into the size of a three-inch square cube.  The unit can be mounted on poles, sides of buildings or anywhere else there is power and a broadband connection.

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Alcatel Lucent's technology is similar to that of antennas used in Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS), which use small antennas mounted on existing telephone poles at sites around the target cell service area.  

Questioning by board members appeared to rattle Pierson as he could not come up with an effective response that would indicate that the cube was not suitable for the quarry application. Instead, he continually insisted that the technology was not meant to alleviate cell towers or to supply radio frequency across wide distances, such as a 23-acre parcel.   

“The cube isn’t anything new,” Pierson said at the May meeting. “It’s not changing the laws of physics. It’s a DAS system and DAS has issues.”

Since the meeting, however, Foose has traveled to Lower Merion Township in Pennsylvania to speak to town officials and residents there about the effectiveness of their DAS application.

"No cell towers and my cell phone and the cell phones of other residents worked just fine and they have had the system since 2006," Foose said.

At the next meeting, the citizens group intends to bring an RF engineer who is a Lucent employee to testify as to the applicability of the cube in the quarry application. Presumably, he will also answer questions as to the readiness of the cube technology, which, according to Alcatel Lucent, will not be deployed until 2013 at the earliest, and even then it will be in beta testing.

"I do think that the zoning board has gone out of their way to accommodate us and allow us to ask questions and bring evidence," Foose said. "We are not experts. I feel that they have worked with us. They have given us due process."

Foose's approach is key. Since the fight to block the cell tower began, he as joined the Somerset County Open Space Environmental Committee as a board member. 

"One thing that the county has communicated to me is that they will abide by the decision of the Warren Township Zoning Board," Foose said.

Somerset County purchased the quarry in part with open space funds in 2008 for $822,000 with the intent of creating a recreation area out of the tract. 

"Here's the upshot of the county," said Warren resident Alan Davidson, a core member of the citizen's group. "They have done a lot of things that are  supportive and open, but it's problematic where they actually stand on this issue."

Ultimately, however, it is indeed the zoning board's decision about whether to allow the applicant to erect the tower in its municipality.

"Warren has enacted ordinances to protect homeowners and residences from such situations as well as to protect the beauty and rural atmosphere of our town," Sally Davidson wrote in a letter she was planning to read to the board at the June 6 meeting. Scheduling will prevent her from attending. 

"Now that the cell companies have erected towers in all the commercial areas of town," Davidson continues, "they are going after the residential areas and residents are protesting the financial and environmental impact they will have on our quality of life."

Another wrinkle in the equation is the potential merger between AT&T and T-Mobile. T-Mobile and Verizon want a cell tower in the quarry because they do not have access to the Spectra Energy tower on nearby Arvindale Road, but some say a merger would perhaps make the cell tower issue moot, assuming the Spectra Energy tower could be used by T-Mobile, the primary applicant.

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