An installation blitz of communication towers across rural Alberta to deliver broadband Internet service hit a snag at Mountain View County's planning commission meeting on July 7.Applying for development permits to allow the placement of three 300-foot communication towers in the county, CCI Wireless official Dave Grixti was grilled on whether the company had explored other options before selecting prime cropland for one of its five-acre sites.ìThis tower is in the corner of a very nice field,î Div. 1 Coun. Kevin Good said about the first application, proposed for Rge. Rd. 280 and Twp. Rd. 324, one and a half miles south of Reed Ranch School. ìThere are other areas where it would have had a lot less agricultural impact.îMost of the space around the towers is available for grazing, Grixti replied, but Good pointed out the property was ìnot a grazing quarter.îìWe try to use grazing land as much as we can. These towers are talking to each other. We do look at other locations if they're viable,î said Grixti, CCI's vice president sales and marketing.The site was not the company's first choice, Grixti said.ìThere were other landowners who were approached and were not interested.îGrixti pointed to the benefits of the service. ìWe are mandated by Industry Canada to allow co-location. Our focus is rural. We can make it available to farmers at very low cost. It's a 300-foot tower so it's definitely going to improve communication in the area.îAnswering one concern raised by objectors, Grixti added that the frequency used ìis licensed by Industry Canada and as such it doesn't cause any interferenceî for radio emitting systems.The towers are ìgood for the community,î Good acknowledged, ìbut we could bring all the positives to the community without the negative impact,î he added.ìThat's a big impact on cropland in a cropland area. There's very little impact on grazing land Ö There needs to be a trade-off to the technical benefits Ö Elevation can be fixed very easily in a grazing situation Ö Elevation shouldn't be more important than land use in your decision making,î Good advised.Following presentations by objecting landowners Gerard and Rineke Weinans, Good appealed to MPC to consider the long-term impact on agriculture, with crop spraying being an important aspect, and chair Greg Harris said he understood those concerns.But Harris noted the tower serves needs that have ìbecome an integral part of farmingî and ìif landowners are unwilling to sell to them,î he added, ìwhat can an organization like CCI do?îHarris said he has ìrun a double baler around several communication towers. It's a challenge but it can be done.îìPerhaps by moving the network we could mitigate the impact on agriculture,î public member Keith Branter suggested. ìWe're not seeing the full picture.îìWe did look at some other quarter sections,î Grixti said. ìThe letter from the landowner suggested five locations. We looked at that.îGrixti then sounded a warning note: ìGetting land from a willing landowner is a very difficult thing to do ñ it takes six to nine months. Moving a tower could jeopardize this whole project three to six months out.îBut that didn't go over with the chair.ìUrgency stiffens our resistance,î Harris told him.ìThe timelines were provided by Industry Canada,î Grixti explained. ìThe grant money has to be spent by the end of the year. We're placing 200 towers in this province and the most difficult part is getting willing landowners.ìThe issue I have is trying to find a new location this late in the game without having willing landowners Ö There's about two months of engineering that goes into planning this, so if you move a tower Ö it's a domino effect.îAsked if the tower sites could be reviewed as a package with additional information provided by the company, development officer Jessica Ross said four remaining development permit applications could be dealt with together at the next MPC meeting on July 21. CCI has already been approved for two towers ñ one in Water Valley and another near Cremona.The information CCI is being asked to provide includes existing and proposed tower locations, measures taken to mitigate agricultural impact, and network coverage maps showing range flexibility and potential overlap.ìAnytime good ag land is used for such a purpose as a tower we just wanna make sureî all options are explored, Harris told Grixti, who had started to say: ìWhat I'm struggling with ñîMPC voted to defer the Reed Ranch application, as well as similar proposals for the Bearberry and Eagle Hill areas, to this Thursday's meeting.The Reed Ranch tower is designed to maximize the broadband coverage for the Torrington area, while the Eagle Hill tower (proposed for Rge. Rd. 42 and Twp. Rd. 332) will serve the Sundre area and the Bearberry tower (proposed for Rge. Rd. 72, half a mile north of Highway 584) will serve Bearberry.Four adjacent landowners wrote letters of objection to the Reed Ranch site and eight signed a petition opposing it. While concerns were expressed about agricultural impact, health concerns and potential interference with GPS and other systems were also cited.Appearing before MPC, Rineke Weinans said one of her major concerns was the possible cancer risks from radiation exposure.ìWe are strongly opposed to this,î she said.ìThis is not a good location for a tower,î Gerard Weinans said. ìIt's a very populated area. There are better areas on pastureland. They can say it is not a health risk but it's the same with cellphones Ö you don't know. Spraying for bugs is a concern too. It will affect us,î he said.In its response to residents' concerns, CCI states that Industry Canada requires all telecommunication tower providers to adhere to Health Canada's Safety Code 6, which sets maximum acceptable electromagnetic energy levels.ìCCI has conducted a third-party analysis of the equipment Ö (and) the results show the equipment emits less than one per cent of the maximum limits,î the company wrote.In their objection letters residents predicted CCI would dismiss their concerns, but expressed skepticism over the company's assurances.
