Cell tower near Redfish Lake could aid in emergencies. But critics say it will ruin views
When the Idaho Department of Lands first received an application to create a new cellular phone tower near a popular lake, officials knew the proposal would be contentious.
“The proposed use could be controversial or draw attention beyond the above items,” senior resource specialist Meribeth Lomkin wrote in a December 2018 email to other department members detailing potential visual and noise impacts of the proposal.
Lomkin was right.
In mid-December 2018, an AT&T representative submitted an application to lease property near Redfish Lake from the Idaho Department of Lands. The company wanted to build a cellular tower to serve FirstNet, a federally mandated nationwide network for first responders.
A year later, the proposal has indeed prompted some debate. Officials say the structure will be a crucial part of the public safety network, while local outdoors advocates worry the 195-foot tower will mar the wild beauty of the surrounding Sawtooths.
Officials: FirstNet tower would improve emergency response at Redfish
AT&T has been building out infrastructure for FirstNet since 2017, when it was awarded the government contract to establish the network. The service has been in the works since 2012, when Congress passed legislation to adopt a dedicated network as a remedy to communication issues like those experienced in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. FirstNet is meant to link a wide variety of public safety agencies across the country, particularly in mass catastrophes, by using a dedicated band of network spectrum that prioritizes first responders. Then-Gov. Butch Otter announced Idaho would opt into the network in September of 2017.
According to an Idaho Department of Lands fact sheet, the proposed tower is meant to improve communications coverage at popular Redfish Lake and into parts of the surrounding Sawtooth National Recreation Area.
Plans for the tower first came to light publicly in December 2019, when the Idaho Department of Lands began its month-long required advertising period for the lease. Ads were posted in the Challis Messenger newspaper, as well as on the agency’s website, at its Jerome office and at its Boise headquarters.
Department spokeswoman Sharla Arledge told the Statesman the agency is working with AT&T on a draft lease. The lease, like AT&T’s original proposal, calls for a “195-foot lattice tower inside a 75’ x 50’ site.” The tower would be enclosed by a 6-foot chain-link fence.
“The application proposal is for a 20-year lease term at a base rate of $29,851.31 per year,” the Idaho Department of Lands fact sheet said, “with revenue going to support Idaho’s public school children.”
The tower would be about a half-mile west of the Sawtooth Fish Hatchery off of Decker Flat Sheep Drive Road on a small parcel of Idaho Department of Lands property surrounded by Forest Service property.
Amanda Watson, AT&T’s Idaho spokeswoman, said the tower wouldn’t just be a boon for first responders. It would also improve cell phone coverage for recreators and residents — though public safety uses would still take precedent.
“Having a tower in the area, we don’t want it to be a superfluous piece of infrastructure,” Watson said.
There’s already an existing 100-foot cellular tower on the same parcel, this one installed by Custer Telephone in 2013. According to the Idaho Department of Lands news release, AT&T said it couldn’t come to agreement with CusterTel to co-locate on the existing tower. Watson said AT&T’s taller tower would be installed at an angle necessary for increased coverage that’s essential to FirstNet. She said the new tower would also be able to interface with a tower in Stanley.
“It hits an angle to provide different, more expansive coverage,” she said in a phone interview.
CusterTel disagreed. In a letter sent in January to Idaho Department of Lands Director Dustin Miller via its attorneys, CusterTel argued that it has room to co-locate on its tower.
“Co-location is particularly important in this case because the Property is part of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, an area recognized and protected for natural and scenic beauty,” the letter said.
The utility also said it conducted spectrum analyses that showed negligible differences in spectrum coverage from 100-foot and 200-foot towers.
“The analysis shows that due to the topography of the area, a taller tower on the property does not provide materially better coverage …,” the letter said. “Additional towers at the southern end of the corridor near Smiley Creek would be more beneficial to coverage than a new, taller tower on the property.”
Cell tower would be ‘brutal stab wound’ on Sawtooths wilderness, critics say
In addition to CusterTel’s reservations, the tower proposal has earned criticism from concerned neighbors and local preservation groups — though they’re quick to clarify that they don’t take issue with FirstNet.
“It’s easy to understand the desire to have good first responder access,” said Harvey Dale, who owns a home near the hatchery and is on the board of the Sawtooth Society, which advocates for open space preservation in the area. “We think being able to help people is important.”
Instead, Dale and others said they worry the 195-foot tower, which will be placed on a ridge that rises over the surrounding Sawtooth Valley, will be ugly and out of place amid the mountains, trees and lakes.
“It would be … contrary to a whole lot of values here in the SNRA,” Dale said.
The Sawtooth Society and Sawtooth Interpretive and Historical Association have sent letters to the Idaho Department of Lands raising concerns about the proposal and calling for a solution that better serves the area.
Stanley Mayor Steve Botti told the Statesman he worries a tower that tall could require lighting — though Idaho Department of Lands said the lease does not call for that — and impact the newly established dark sky reserve in the area.
Ed Cannady, who was the longtime backcountry manager for the recreation area, said a tower that tall would be “a brutal stab wound” in the scenic wilderness.
According to IDL employee Lomkin’s email in 2018, about 100 feet of the tower would be visible above the tree canopy from nearby properties. Cannady said it would also be visible from Redfish Lake, which is arguably the most popular camping spot in the state, and from the new trail system being built to connect Redfish to Stanley. He said that would undermine the nearly $65 million in federal taxpayer dollars that have been spent to secure scenic easements and preserve the Sawtooths.
More than anything, Cannady said, he’s frustrated at how little information has been made public on the proposal and how little say residents have had on the project.
Though it advertised the proposal online and in the Custer County newspaper of record, the Idaho Department of Lands is not required to have a public comment period on endowment lands, which are designated to provide funding to Idaho’s public school system.
“Maybe they have a good argument (for building the tower), but we’ll never know,” Cannady said in a phone interview. “You have something that affects this many people in a place this special, and you didn’t even let us know about it.”
Paul Hill, who is on the board for the Sawtooth Interpretive and Historical Association, said he thinks some of the backlash against the structure may have been prevented if the agency had opted to involve the public.
“It’s quite possible everybody would feel better about it,” he said. “It smacks of them trying to sneak it through without everyone knowing.”
Critics said they’re left with a lot of questions about the project, including how it would help first responders.
“They’re going to say it’s necessary for emergency response, and I say ‘bullcrap,’ ” Cannady said. “I was involved in emergency response up here for years.”
Details on Idaho cell tower still undetermined
Some questions have gone unanswered because, for now, there are no answers. AT&T and the Idaho Department of Lands told the Statesman they don’t have a timeline for when the draft lease will be completed.
It still must be reviewed by AT&T and by the department’s deputy attorneys general before it can be signed by Miller, who is the department director, as well as Secretary of State Lawerence Denney and Gov. Brad Little. After the lease is approved, AT&T will need to construct the tower, though no timeline exists for that, either.
In the meantime, Sawtooth advocates said they’ll continue to raise their concerns across their community and the state. Many have contacted the Idaho Department of Lands, and others have reached out to Gov. Little.
“There’s nothing we can do except squawk,” Cannady said. “I’m always hopeful that (Little) will do something. But am I optimistic? No.”
This story was originally published January 30, 2020 at 4:00 AM.
