The Springs Fire District, which wants to remove a 150-foot-tall tower behind its firehouse on Fort Pond Boulevard and replace it with one 30 feet taller, proposed relocating the new tower farther away from adjoining residential properties at a Dec. 18 meeting of the East Hampton Town Planning Board. Several neighbors have objected to the tower as an aesthetic blight and a safety hazard, due to its close proximity to residences.
The fire department uses the tower for low-band and back-up ground communications, its lawyer, Carl Irace, told the board. The proposal to build a taller one, Mr. Irace said, “is solely to accommodate Police Department equipment. This is an ideal location for that . . . we’re offering that rent-free.”
East Hampton Town, meanwhile, has proposed installing a new tower in Springs as part of a planned upgrade of its emergency communications system. If the town instead chooses to use the fire department’s proposed tower, Mr. Irace said, the district would follow the planning board’s advice on where best to place it.
“If not, the pole stays where it is,” he said. “No matter what happens with this or any other site, the fire department . . . will continue to use the existing pole for its communications.”
The two sites now proposed for the tower are more centrally located on the firehouse property. According to a memo from Eric Schantz, a senior town planner, one would be 216 feet from the western property line and 136 feet from the northern, rear property line. The other would be 168 feet from the western side and 153 feet from the rear. “Both alternatives are favored over the original proposal,” said Mr. Schantz.
At a Sept. 11 hearing on the matter, Janine Brino and John Coughlin, lawyers for the co-applicant, Elite Towers, a wireless communications company, had said the proposed tower would eventually hold cellphone carriers, but the current application is strictly for an emergency communications tower, which would not have to meet the same code requirements as a cell tower. It would be exempt from a “fall zone” restriction: “No property line can be within an area equal to the height of the tower, and no habitable building or outdoor space where people congregate can be within two times its height.”
Board members remained wary last week about cell carriers later seeking approval for placement on the new tower, and suggested they would add a condition barring them if the application were approved. Richard Whalen, a lawyer representing the neighbors, encouraged such a prohibition. “Once the tower goes up, you can’t have people coming in trying to put a wireless facility and seek variances,” he said.
The department’s existing tower was built in 2015 without site plan approval from the planning board. Patrick Glennon, chairman of the Springs board of fire commissioners, said town attorneys at the time had given the Building Department the go-ahead to approve a permit, based on precedents. The Amagansett Fire District, he noted, had installed its tower in 2004 without planning board approval.
The zoning board of appeals, however, revoked the building permit for the Springs tower, and the fire district is suing the Z.B.A. over that determination.
The planning board also discussed a pending application to place an emergency communications tower at the Camp Blue Bay Girl Scouts camp on Flaggy Hole Road, the site the town board has selected as its preferred spot.
“If we could move the Springs Fire Department antennas to Camp Blue Bay, that to me, from a planning perspective, is the home run here,” said Randy Parsons.
Ms. Brino of Elite Towers said that was not an option. “The fire district needs to have their ground communications on their property,” she said.
Samuel Kramer, chairman, asked planning board members to set aside their reservations about the application and focus on the task at hand: selecting the preferred location for the tower on the firehouse property.
The board unanimously favored the second option, which puts the tower at a more acceptable distance from the nearby residences.
