Where before there was a 40 foot high light post of old timber, T-Mobile plans to build a 120 foot high cell tower, rising above the nearby Douglas Firs, and visible from the surrounding neighborhoods. The home where Alex Torone and his family live is just 90 feet away – the distance from home plate to first base – well within the proposed tower’s fall zone.

Since November of last year, Torone and a number of his neighbors in the Tibbets Station neighborhood have been fighting T-Mobile’s plan to erect the cell tower near the intersection of Southeast Issaquah-Beaver Lake Road and East Beaver Lake Drive Southeast in Sammamish. For the past month, the case has been before Hearing Examiner John Galt, after T-Mobile refused to enter into mediation with the residents earlier this year. On Tuesday, Galt ruled in favor of T-Mobile, and the City of Sammamish who approved the permit, allowing the company to build their tower regardless of the objections of the people who live beneath it.

The case comes as the City of Sammamish is attempting to draft guidelines for the construction of cell towers and other wireless communications facilities. One of the main purposes of the new Wireless Communications Facilities (WCF) ordinance now being considered by the Sammamish City Council is precisely to avoid this kind of dispute, prompted by residents’ concerns that such structures were changing the character of neighborhoods, ruining skylines, affecting people’s health, and reducing their property values.

In the past, the city has relied upon a series of emergency amendments to dictate how such facilities were regulated. But when wireless communications company Clearwire built a large tower in the Trossachs neighborhood three years ago that disgusted residents and stunned councilors and some city staff with its clear incompatibility with the neighborhood, the city knew it would have to draft firm guidelines to prevent a repeat of the incident.

Under the WCF ordinance currently being considered by the city, providers are encouraged to build new facilities according to a list of the city’s most preferred sites.

For Torone and his neighbors, the drama began in March of last year, when the city posted a notice of T-Mobile’s application at the proposed site. In response, residents sent more than 20 e-mails and letters of objection to the city, citing visual and health concerns, and the effect the 120 foot high cell tower would have on the character of the neighborhood.

According to resident John Putnam, the residents received no response from the city.

“And then in November, they decide to issue the permit,” he said. “We heard nothing from them.”

Eager to sit down with T-Mobile to negotiate a compromise and have their concerns heard, the residents applied for mediation, a provision of the Sammamish Municipal Code designed to keep disputes like this out of the courts. However T-Mobile declined the request for mediation, and according to Putnam, the residents have received no communication from the multinational corporation.

That left only one option for Torone, Putnam, and the dozens of neighbors opposed to the cell tower – the Hearing Examiner, a process that has cost them thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of legal study and representation.

(The images in the online slideshow that accompanies this story are taken from Torone’s supporting evidence, and are computer models of the visibility of the tower from surrounding locations.)

The essence of their case was whether or not a 120 foot tower would have a negative impact on real estate values. The residents presented a licensed real estate appraiser who stated “there is a negative effect on marketability where the cell phone is visible to homeowners.” In response, T-Mobile produced their own expert who claimed that potential buyers would not be concerned about having a cell tower nearby.

The hearing concluded on March 4 in the Sammamish City Hall Council chambers. Five days later, Hearing Examiner John Galt ruled in favor of T-Mobile, dismissing claims that the 120 foot pole was not compatible with the character of the neighborhood, and stating the residents produced no compelling evidence that home values would be affected.

Galt’s ruling states that T-Mobile did all they could to satisfy the requirement hierarchy of the city, which gives preference to facilities located on city owned arterial rights-of-way, particularly when new wireless facilities can be combined with existing ones.

Current regulations state that a cell tower or wireless facility must be set back from residential property one foot for every one foot of tower height, plus 10 feet. The 120 foot T-Mobile tower is only 90 feet from a residential property, but is allowed this exemption because it is situated in a right-of-way.

One component of the residents’ objection was that the city was ignoring the recommendations of its own Wireless Master Plan, which it paid Florida-based consultants CityScape to produce in 2005. In that master plan, the consultant recognized that positioning new infrastructure in parks and city-owned open spaces would help accomplish the goals of reducing the number of transmission support structures built within the community, and

limiting the visibility of new transmission support structures and collocations on the landscape.

In filing his complaint, Torone wrote “the south of Beaver Lake Park, as well as Duthie Hill parks, meets (more preferred) criteria.”

“The Wireless Master Plan demonstrates a proposed used of public lands… which accomplished the goal of complete wireless coverage for the projected expansion of the population through 2012. Yet they continue to search in residential areas.”

A CityScape survey of elected and appointed officials, staff and citizens found that respondents clearly “identified the goal of the Ordinance should be to; 1) reduce the number of transmission support structures built within the community; 2) limit the visibility of new transmission support structures and collocations on the landscape.”

Following a series of administrative errors by both T-Mobile and the residents, caused in part by changes to the city’s hierarchy policy between March and November, Hearing Examiner Galt threw out the residents’ complaints which charged that better site options were available for T-Mobile. Their argument was left to rest with the claim that the cell tower “compromises the residential homes adjacent to the site,” a subjective argument which, in the end, did not convince Galt. He instead preferred the interpretation of T-Mobile’s real estate expert that homebuyers were not at all influenced by the close proximity of cell towers.

Torone told The Reporter on Wednesday the city’s ordinance did very little to protect the character that is one of the great selling points of Sammamish.

“I question whether the planners have the right frame of mind when they are approaching these things,” he said. “Our issue with the city was, ‘did you consider the general purpose of why you have this ordinance in the first place?’ To say that this doesn’t alter the character of the neighborhood is ridiculous. Nowhere else on that street is there anything like a 120 foot cell tower.”

Torone said he was disappointed that no consideration was given to moving the tower a short distance to alleviate the concerns of the residents.

“What was really suspicious about this case was that it seemed to be one of ‘x marks the spot,'” he said.

Despite the clear message of councilors that preserving the aesthetics of the city was of great importance, City of Sammamish Director of Community Development Kamuron Gurol said it was not the sole intention of the WCF ordinance to keep facilities out of residential areas, as had been claimed.

“The city is about 90 percent residential area,” he said. “If we wanted to keep them out of residential areas, we would have to restrict all facilities to small areas of land, and we would not be in compliance with federal law.”

According to Torone, the problem with the clear-cut preference for facilities on arterial rights-of-way is that arterials are so different across the city.

“There are certain rights-of-way that work fine, and some that don’t,” he said. “Some of them, like this one, pass right next to people’s homes.”

Tibbets Station residents are still in the dark as to why the 120 foot tower could not have been moved 30 feet across Southeast Issaquah-Beaver Lake Road – moving it away from any residences. According to the City of Sammamish Senior Planner Emily Arteche, those kinds of decisions were made largely by the companies involved, based on cost and convenience.

“That sort of thing is completely up to T-Mobile and Puget Sound Energy,” she said, referring the cooperation of the two agencies in utilizing existing wiring and infrastructure. “It doesn’t involve the city at all.”

In addition to considering its strategic coverage area, a T-Mobile spokesperson told The Reporter the company purposefully chose that site for two reasons:

1. So the tower would be close to the tall trees, providing a visual screen;

2. To provide enough ground space to install an underground equipment vault beneath the pole.

If the tower was moved across the road, it would be on King County land, the neighborhood of Klahanie. The City of Sammamish will receive between $800 and $1,000 per month from T-Mobile for use of the right-of-way.

The T-Mobile victory will be of further concern to a growing group of Americans worried that governments are building a legislative landscape very much in favor of communications companies, forcing residents to live with the forest of antenna, satellite equipment, monopoles and wireless towers that is sprouting up around them.

Federal legislation now prevents anyone from objecting to such towers on the basis of health concerns, ruling in favor of the communications providers in the absence of unanimous scientific opinion that radiation from wireless facilities could have any impact on people or animals.

“We knew that,” Torone said. “And T-Mobile, they really waved this (ruling) around – ‘you can’t argue this.'”

Worried that governments were bending over to communications companies, the Coalition for Local Oversight of Utility Technologies (CLOUT) formed in California recently, to insist the health and environmental impacts of towers should be a “legal, legitimate component of all deliberations involving their placement, construction, and modification.”

CLOUT claims that over the past 15 years, such facilities have had “a dramatic effect on the American landscape,” including “reduction in property values, destruction of views, and adverse impacts on human health and the environment.”

Torone said he was not planning an appeal, but was hoping to work with the city on improvements to the WCF ordinance to prevent the further degradation of neighborhoods.

“If any sane person is looking around for a home, and there’s a cell tower right next to them, they’re going to look elsewhere,” Torone said. “If we don’t really watch what is going on, we’re going to be peppered with these things all over our skyline.”