Commissioners on the St. Croix Coastal Zone Management Committee held off on a vote to approve or deny a 150-foot communications tower Thursday evening amid community pushback.
Attorney Kevin Rames represented developer Blue Sky Towers Thursday and said the proposed project had changed significantly after residents and property owners voiced concerns during a public hearing in February. Changes included shortening a utility and access easement connecting to East Shore Road and a modification of the site footprint from 60-by-60 square feet to 120-by-30 square feet.
“The same square footage but significantly modified in order to ensure that the environmental impact of the creation of this site is minimized as much as possible,” Rames explained. “In fact, the access road leading in from Estate South Grapetree Bay subdivision into project site is small enough so that it does not qualify for the creation of a stormwater pollution prevention program application.”
The project was launched by Liberty Mobile and the Virgin Islands government as part of the First Responder Network, or FirstNet, and is funded by a combination of public and private sources. Rames noted Thursday that of the 11 sites identified for construction, only the parcel in Estate Long Point and Cotton Garden was suitable. The others were on protected land owned by the government or the nonprofit Nature Conservancy.
“There has been some discussion — most recently at the CZM level — concerning an alternative site,” Rames said, “and that alternative site is owned by the government of the Virgin Islands and subject to the same conservation easement as all of the other government sites.”
One property owner, Mark Salisbury, said Rames made it sound like residents’ sole concern was the access road, “when in fact we had concerns about property devaluation, radio frequency — high-power radio frequency — being pumped into people’s homes, view degradation and environmental concerns as well.” Woodward said one alternative proposal involved bolting “microcells” to existing utility poles, which would eliminate further environmental impact and fill in coverage gaps caused by the area’s terrain.
After more discussion, Commissioner Kai Nielsen asked Rames if he was opposed to delaying a vote on the matter while the committee gathered more community input for developers to address.
“I would appreciate that at this point,” Rames said, “because this is really not — I don’t want to overstate here — but this is generally not the forum within which new and fundamental questions are asked. This is the forum where those answers have already been given and you’re discussing those answers.”
Earlier Thursday evening, committee members voted to approve a plan to install boat lifts in Gallows Bay.
“One of our big challenges — unlike Salt River and Green Cay Marina — is that we don’t have a very protected harbor area, so we get a lot of wave action in our marina which causes boat damage and dock lines breaking and fenders deflating, just because it’s very unprotected from the weather,” St. Croix Marine Center owner Chris Hanley told the committee.
