Industry, Interior Department Clash on Proposed Tower Rules
An industry coalition and the Interior Department clashed sharply on what the FCC should do next to curb bird deaths caused by wireless towers. The written comments largely tracked points both sides made during a Sept. 20 FCC workshop (CD Sept 21 p 11). The comments were in response to a draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) released by the commission. The FCC found in that document that communications tower collisions kill millions of birds every year, but the numbers must be weighed against the overall U.S. bird population, estimated at 10 billion birds (CD Aug 30/10 p5).
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"Rather than attempt to heavy-handedly impose complex and time-consuming procedures on a nationwide basis, the Infrastructure Coalition urges the FCC to adopt the least intrusive regulatory alternative and rely on the local and national public notice process to provide interested members of the public the opportunity to raise local tower-specific concerns,” said CTIA, NAB, PCIA and the National Association of Tower Erectors (http://xrl.us/bmhu2m).
The FCC is examining five alternatives, requiring varying degrees of regulation. If the toughest rules are approved, the number of applications requiring environmental assessments “would increase greatly, placing an unmanageable burden on the Commission’s resources ... and the [Antenna Structure Registration] process would grind to a halt,” the coalition said. “The inevitable result would be that the rapid buildout of wireless broadband infrastructure ... would falter and then collapse.”
The FCC has found that “in each case there will be no significant effect, given the vastly greater contribution to avian mortality from other sources,” the industry coalition said. “As a result, the proper determination under each of the five alternatives is a finding of no significant effect, eliminating any need for a nationwide Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement.” The facts demonstrate that buildings, cats, and power lines “cause nearly 90 percent of avian mortality, while communications towers are only responsible for less than 0.2 percent,” the coalition said.
The Interior Department, however, urged the FCC to conduct a further “programmatic environmental impact statement” and said the “finding of no significant impact” called for by industry is not supported by the facts.
"Towers and other structures that project into airspace used by birds unequivocally result in strikes and bird mortalities,” the department said (http://xrl.us/bmhu4m). Moreover, “tower collisions disproportionally affect neotropical migratory passerine species that migrate at night, such as the Swainson’s warbler, Kentucky warbler, Golden-winged warbler and Henslow’s sparrow.” The department said the FCC’s analysis of bird deaths should address the “relative vulnerability” of different species “based on abundance, status, and population trends.”