Group that Promoted NPA Asks FCC to Reconsider Order
The Tower Siting Policy Alliance (TSPA), representing a group of wireless carriers and tower companies, filed a petition for reconsideration on the FCC’s National Programmatic Agreement (NPA) on tower siting, saying some provisions undermine the intent of streamlining the approval process. The alliance zeroes in on requirements for what it argues are overly burdensome archeological field surveys and overly permissive tribal exemptions from exclusions. The members were active proponents of concluding work on the NPA.
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The TSPA raises “some legitimate concerns about the process the Commission has set up,” said an attorney who worked on the NPA. “It raises the issue that the Congress may have unwittingly imposed on the industry some high costs.” The FCC approved the NPA in Sept. by a 3-2 vote over the objections of Comrs. Abernathy and Martin. The agreement had been almost 3 years in the making.
The TSPA actively promoted the completion of the agreement between the FCC, the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers (NCSHPO) and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. Key members include Cingular, T-Mobile and American Tower. Other industry players had been more reticent about the agreement as it took shape.
“These provisions unfairly burden the Section 106 process and fail, either to balance adequately the interests of the parties, or to advance the main NPA goals of eliminating overly burdensome and unnecessary procedures, while fully protecting historic properties,” the alliance argued in its petition. “Unfortunately, as crafted, these rules will not streamline the process, nor offer a corresponding increase in protection for historic properties.”
On archeological surveys, the group noted that the NPA rules as published require “unless one of two narrowly defined exceptions applies” that a company that wants to build a tower complete a study. TSPA said this was a departure from the draft of the NPA and also from everyday procedures where in 95% of cases historic preservation officers don’t request a survey.
“These requirements are significantly more onerous and burdensome than the procedures employed in current practice,” the group said. “Nothing in the record of this proceeding, or in experiences reported by practitioners in the field over the past few years, suggests or would justify an overly expansive, near universal requirement for archeological field surveys for every new tower.”
TSPA also questioned why the agreement exempts towers on tribal land from exclusions for projects in industrial areas and rights-of-way. The Commission granted the exemption on the grounds that Indian historic sites “often are not listed in the National Register or other publicly available sources.” TSPA countered that the FCC never provides support for this claim. The group also asserted that the exemption is “overbroad.” TSPA observed: “The point of these exemptions is not that there are no unidentified historic properties within the area of the exception, but rather that the incremental visual impact of communications tower on a historic property is likely to be minimal.”