Borough in private talks on cell tower site
DEP again rejects request for Fair Haven Fields site
BY LIZ SHEEHAN
Correspondent

Fair Haven

FAIR HAVEN - Mayor Michael Halfacre said that the borough is now involved in negotiations that must remain private to attempt to solve the problem of where to place a cell tower in the town.

We are "at the end of our rope [concerning the situation]," he said on Tuesday.

The results of the negotiations will be known soon, Halfacre added.

Last week, after a meeting in Trenton with Halfacre, Borough Council President Thomas Gilmour, Councilman Christopher Walrath and Borough Administrator Mary Howell, state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) officials turned down the town's request to swap borough land to obtain a site in Fair Haven Fields as the location of the cell tower, according to the mayor.

Halfacre said the meeting lasted for an hour and the DEP officials then left the room and returned in two minutes with their decision.

He said that the reasons for the denial given by the DEP were that the agency didn't want to set a precedent of using Green Acres property for a cell tower and its fear of being sued by environmental groups if the tower was allowed on a Green Acres site.

"We felt we had done a very good job of presenting the borough's case for placing the tower on Fair Haven Fields," Halfacre said. "We knew it was an uphill job."

On Tuesday, Karen Hershey, a spokeswoman for the DEP, said the agency denied the Fair Haven request because it did not believe that the town "had adequately demonstrated there was no alternative sites for the cell tower."

This is the second time the town has been turned down by the DEP in its request to use Fair Haven Fields for the tower site since the Borough Council passed an ordinance in 2004 that restricted cell towers to borough-owned land.

Permission must be obtained from the DEP for the use because Green Acres funding, which is dedicated to acquiring land for conservation and recreational use, was used to buy the land for Fair Haven Fields.

Since the first rejection by the DEP, the council has looked at several sites for a tower, all of which have met with strong opposition from groups of residents, with some suggesting that no cell tower should be placed in the town while others, citing poor cell phone service in some areas of the borough, say it is a necessity.

After studying several alternatives, the council selected the police station property for the tower's site, but after learning approval would be needed for the DEP for that location, changed to a lot down the street from the first choice, which was located between two residences.

This choice led to a storm of protest, including a promise that nearby residents would go to court to block it.

It was then that the council, supported by its legislative representatives, Assembly members Michael Panter (D-12) and Jennifer Beck (R-12) turned again to the DEP to ask to use Fair Haven Fields and presented a plan that would swap borough-owned land adjacent to Fair Haven Fields for the use of a site in the fields.

While the town is trying to find its own tower site, Verizon Wireless has entered into an agreement with the Church of the Nativity, Ridge Road, to use some of its property to construct a 133-foot cell tower.

The company has filed an application with the town's Zoning Board for the project and has had several hearings on the proposal. The next hearing will be at a special meeting of the board in March. No date has been set for that meeting yet.

At one of the board hearings, Warren Stillwell, the attorney for Verizon, when asked about the town's ordinance restricting cell towers to borough-owned land, said that a similar ordinance passed by Ringwood had been overturned in a state court.

Halfacre said Tuesday that the borough had no control over the application by Verizon, because it was before the Zoning Board, which is an independent body.

He said the council has hired an attorney to represent the town at the board hearings on the Verizon application.

The Verizon proposal is being opposed by many residents who live near the church as well as by some parishioners of Nativity Church, who say there was no consultation with the parishioners about putting the cell tower on church property.