The La Plata County Board of County Commissioners approved on Tuesday in a 2-1 vote a major land-use permit for a contentious cell tower to be built off County Road 502.
Fidelity Towers, the applicant, will build a 150-foot monopole to hold T-Mobile equipment above a gravel pit at the intersection of county roads 501 and 502 south of Vallecito and Lemon reservoirs. The tower, which will be painted a flat green, will primarily service the Forest Lakes subdivision.
Tuesday’s deliberations followed 90 minutes of public comment at an Oct. 15 meeting, when nearby residents voiced objections to the project primarily on the basis of its negative visual impact. Several detractors also cited possible negative health impacts, although the evidence presented was both dubious in quality and ultimately moot, given that commissioners are barred by federal law from considering health impacts in deliberations.
After the mid-October comments, commissioners voted to postpone a final vote on the project, a decision that hinged on an eleventh-hour claim by T-Mobile that the lack of cell service in the area “has cost lives.”
Commissioners indicated they were caught off guard by the serious nature of the claim and wanted to know more about its factual basis before incorporating it into the decision-making process.
The remark stemmed from a 2023 conversation between a T-Mobile employee and Upper Pine River Fire Protection District Chief Bruce Evans in which Evans made mention of an accidental death near Lemon Reservoir that may have been avoided had commercial wireless coverage been available to notify emergency responders immediately, T-Mobile clarified in an Oct. 25 letter.
“We regret how that initial conversation may have been misconstrued and how its mention in our previous letter has been misinterpreted,” the company said.
In his own follow-up letter, Evans wrote that Upper Pine is concerned about cell coverage in the Lemon basin and Florida Road extending up into the campground. However, he called it an “embellishment by the cell company” to say a cell tower in the proposed location would have changed the outcome of that specific emergency.
“We have one small dead area on CR 501 between Los Pinos Drive and Deer Trail which is a hollow you would have to point a cell tower directly down in that area,” he wrote.
Neighbors of the tower site have come together over the last eight months with a “not-in-my-backyard” message for the BOCC. “We are not opposed to cell service in our area, just the tower location,” 28 of them wrote in a joint letter to the editor published Oct. 19.
However, the BOCC can’t weigh in on whether another site would be better suited, Commissioner Marsha Porter-Norton pointed out.
“If people have been eyeing other places the cell tower should go, that’s not something we can take into consideration – we just can’t,” she said. “… Our job is then (to ask) does it meet the county land-use code?”
She and Commissioner Clyde Church offered comments first and both indicated they would vote to approve the project. Commissioner Matt Salka, a Bayfield resident who is running for reelection in a contested race, is board chair and so spoke last of the three commissioners. He said he would vote against the project.
Salka recognized the need for improved connectivity but said the visual impacts remained an issue for him.
“Given the visual concerns that have not been sufficiently mitigated in my opinion, I believe the applicant does not fully meet the standards and so for this reason, I will be voting ‘no’ on this project,” Salka said.
rschafir@durangoherald.com
