Martin Asking FCC to Proceed on Bird Safety Rulemaking

September 22, 2006 |Miscellaneous

NASHVILLE -- FCC Chmn. Martin is circulating a notice of proposed rulemaking asking questions about cell towers and bird safety, an aide to Comr. Adelstein told PCIA Thurs. The NPRM is “balanced” and “open-ended” but tentatively will conclude that white strobe lights are the “preferred” lighting for towers based on FAA concerns, said senior legal adviser Barry Ohlson. But PCIA officials are questioning whether the FCC can doing anything about bird deaths.

The U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C., ordered the FCC in April to address a petition by the American Bird Conservancy, the Forest Conservation Council and Friends of the Earth. They had asked the court to tell the agency to block construction of new towers until it completes program environmental impact statements on its tower licensing decisions in the Gulf Coast region.

“It’s going to be neutral because it has to get a full vote of the Commission,” Ohlson said: “The agreement was that it would… ask lots of questions… There’s going to be a lot more information that will be coming in, in response to the NPRM.”

Adelstein hasn’t reached any conclusions, Ohlson said: “It’s important to have a next step in this process. The issue is out there… If we're going to do things about it, we should do it as an open process.”

Data are inconclusive on whether white or red strobe lights or blinking red incandescent lights reduce bird deaths, PCIA sources said. In a study completed last year, Central Mich. U. researchers found tower height a far more important variable, with taller towers far deadlier to birds, judging from carcass counts.

Much more study is needed before the FCC can come to conclusions about risks towers pose to birds, PCIA Pres. Michael Fitch told us. “There’s a huge record on avian issues and towers,” Fitch said. Theories vary according to species, light color, and type of light, he said: “A lot of this is not understood at all, and it’s not clear if and when it will ever be. The record at the Commission is all over the place.”

Many bird kill allegations are “very apocryphal,” with no scientific backing, Fitch said. The bird population is always in flux, with some 10 billion birds dying yearly, he said, tagging house cats the biggest bird killers compared to towers, which some suggest kill more than “tens of thousands.” “This record doesn’t support anything,” Fitch said: “This needs to continue to be studied to figure out if there is a real documentable problem.” -- Howard Buskirk

PCIA Notebook…

Fla. state Rep. Ken Littlefield (R) told a PCIA breakfast a bill he helped push through the Fla. legislature could be a model for other states. The measure speeds collocations of antennas from different wireless carriers on the same tower and streamlines siting of new towers. But Littlefield, nominated by Gov. Jeb Bush to a PUC seat, said he faced a fight getting the bill passed. “When somebody wanted to collocate on a tower, the local government treated it as if there was no tower there,” he said: “They treated it as a land use, they had to go through another clearance process to just simply put another antenna on that tower. That became problematic and that bogged down the process.” Ultimately, success came via a public safety argument, he said: “The message was the sooner we can get the state covered with [wireless] service, the safer we're going to be,” he said.

Of 9,500 FCC cell tower inspections since 2001, 2,000- plus led to notices of violation, with the FCC issuing 185 notices of apparent liability totaling more than $1.5 million, data released Thurs. at the PCIA conference showed. David Solomon, former FCC Enforcement Bureau chief, told a Thurs. PCIA session on enforcement issues experience shows that once an enforcement action starts it’s hard for a company to fight back. “It’s particularly important that you take steps to come into compliance,” he said: “[The statistics] suggest that there is work to be done.” The 2 most important things executives can do to prevent problems are instilling in their staff an “ethic of compliance” and having a written compliance plan, he said: “It’s not enough to send out at one point a copy of the rules and say follow them. The company basically through its actions and through its culture [must] encourage people to take the rules seriously. It rewards people who go above and beyond rule compliance. It takes disciplinary actions.”

The PCIA said Thurs. it launched a Distributed Antenna System (DAS) Forum to promote “understanding, acceptance and deployment” of distributed antenna systems. Founding members are Corning Cable, Crown Castle, Donohue & Blue and Sprint Nextel.