Cell Phone Issue
comments, concerns, issues, experiences, related to the cell phone issue in Baxter SP
anyone able to even get a signal up there???
If you get high enough. Last month a SOBO called her Mom from the summit.
Teej
"[ATers] represent three percent of our use and about twenty percent of our effort," retired Baxter Park Director Jensen Bissell.
Yea.....CellPhones in Baxter. Forgetaboutit! Please, don't encourage 'um, guys.....Next thing you know they'll have hand-held computers, MP3's, CD's, DVD's, BVD's, TV's, GOP's and any and every other techno bable they can get up Top The Mountain.KZ@
Kozmic Zian@ :cool: ' My father considered a walk in the woods as equivalent to churchgoing'. ALDOUS HUXLEY
Cell phones in park
May I enlarge this to consider another park the AT goes through? A communications company has submitted an application to build three towers in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The park superintendent reportedly said that he is required by federal law to consider the requests, and that he has to have a good reason to turn them down. My thought: if cell phone users keep pressing demands for service in remote areas, these towers will be built.
Originally Posted by Brushy Sage
Brushy Sage. Could you please email me at [email protected] with more details? Thanks.
jeffrey hunter
'All my lies are always wishes" ~Jeff Tweedy~
Posted on the at-l the other day:
NEW PLAN WOULD PUT CELL PHONE TOWERS IN SMOKIES FOR FIRST TIME
Officials from the Park Service say that for the first time ever, they're seriously considering a proposal by a cell phone company to locate cell phone towers inside the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.
The proposal currently under consideration by Park officials comes from Cingular Wireless. The company seeks to locate three towers on the North Carolina side of the Smokies. One would be placed near Newfound Gap. The other two are proposed for locations near Cherokee, North Carolina.
http://www.wbir.com/News/news.asp?ID=18040
for the rest of the story
Teej
"[ATers] represent three percent of our use and about twenty percent of our effort," retired Baxter Park Director Jensen Bissell.
Supposedly, they can camoflauge or even make towers to look like pine trees. Once cingular gets in, the rest will follow. We'll have a park full of fake trees with wires. Yes, they require both electricity and a phone line. The park would be doing us a grave injustice. We'll know in a few weeks. Happy Hiking!
:jump GAME time :jump
camoflauge
Have you ever seen one of the "camofluaged" cell tower pine trees? The ones that I have seen stand out like a sore thumb. They stick up much higher than the surrounding tree tops, and are not at all tree shaped.
I hate to diverge here from the initial focus on Baxter, maybe we need a new thread regarding the towers in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.
I've been going to the Smokies my entire life (34 years) and the proposal for cell phone towers in the park absolutely sickens me. Even worse a tower is proposed for the parks epicenter, Newfound Gap, and even worse than that the park is "seriously" considering this. Wow!
This all seems to me a complete contradiction of the parks purpose; preserving the beauty of the mountains and the integrity of its wilderness sanctuary, as well as a contradiction to the parks promotion of Leave No Trace ethics.
I have sent an email to the park's general email contact expressing my opinion and requesting contact information for the administrators dealing with this issue. If I get specific contact information I'll post it.
Contemplating a Smoky Mountain view with a cell phone tower has ruined my day.
Yea.....This Cell Phone Tower Thing. Not Good. Write a Letter! Check this out..........
http://www.nps.gov/pub_aff/e-mail/
We can help.....write 'um a letter.....you can help.....also Sec. of Interior, Norton.
Kozmic Zian@ :cool: ' My father considered a walk in the woods as equivalent to churchgoing'. ALDOUS HUXLEY
Thanks for the link. I wrote them and will send one to Washington too. If we bombard them with letters during an election year, we could make a difference. Let them know how you intend to vote.
"It was on the first of May, in the year 1769, that I resigned my domestic happiness for a time, and left my family and peaceable habitation on the Yadkin River, in North Carolina, to wander through the wilderness of America." - Daniel Boone
Additional Contact Links
Tennessee U.S. Senator - Lamar Alexander
http://alexander.senate.gov/contact/
Tennesee U.S. Senator - Bill Frist, M.D.
http://frist.senate.gov/index.cfm?Fu...st.ContactForm
For a comprehensive contact list of government officials see FirstGov.gov at the link below:
http://www.firstgov.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml
Clearly some of you haven't read any of the past threads on cell phones or been hiking much in the past few years. Hikers love cell phones and want reception and thus towers everywhere. If you want a group to oppose cell towers you must go elsewhere. In any case, opposing cell phones is like expecting a sand castle to stop the tide coming in. Americans, for the most part, have to have music and/or talking coming into their brain at all times.
On a recent hike in the area of Blood Mountain, I met with 2 Clay County (NC) Search & Rescue guys. They were adamant that hikers should carry cell phones for safety. I assume that characterized the official position Clay County SAR, and perhaps most rescue groups. This development appears inevitable.
Cell phone editorial
This morning's Asheville Citizen-Times carries an editorial opposing the construction of cell towers in the Smoky Mtn Natl Park. The headline: "Smokies aren't a theme park; cell towers have no place in this bastion of wild grandeur." They quote Ted Snyder of the Sierra Club as asking the "key" question: "Why do they need to have service at Newfound Gap? What good does it do? What have people been doing for the last 200 years?" Here is the URL, though I don't know whether you can read it without registration:
http://cgi.citizen-times.com/cgi-bin...ditorial/54562
Also, to reference this back to the original focus on Baxter State Park, does anyone know whether applications for tower construction have been submitted there?
FYI...Here's the response that I received this morning from my letter opposing the construction of cell towers in Smoky Mountain National Park:
-------------------------------------------
Hello,
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is currently in the early fact-finding phase of evaluating a request from a cell phone carrier to erect from 1 to 3 cell phone towers along U.S. 441 in the North Carolina area of the Park.
Under legal requirements of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, managers of federally owned lands - national parks, national forests, wildlife refuges
- have a responsibility to consider allowing placement of wireless equipment in public lands.
This consideration must be done in the context of all the existing laws and policies and missions that guide that agency. In this case national parks are managed to protect wildlife, waters, vegetation, historic and archeological resources as well as to preserve visitor enjoyment (including scenic values). At the same time we are expected to consider the positive advantages of having cell coverage in terms of our operations and response to visitor emergencies.
In this early part of the consideration we will meet with the requestor and discuss their needs in terms of any clearing , extending utilities, possible impacts on streams and any archeological resources as well as looking at how much the towers might be made less obtrusive visually. After those discussions the Park superintendent will either deny the request, and will provide written reasons for that decision, or say "Maybe". We expect to be at that decision point within about two - three weeks.
The "maybe" would lead to a public decision-making process under the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act - an Environmental Assessment would be prepared. The Assessment would include studies of all the natural, cultural and visitor impacts and would convey that information to the public for comments. Then, based upon the extent of the impacts and the public sentiment received, we would make a final decision as to whether or not to proceed.
I have forwarded you letter to park management. It will be retained for consideration until a final decision is reached. You may contact the park's Public Affairs Office at (865) 436-1207 or write to: Superintendent, 107 Park Headquarters Road, Gatlinburg, TN 37738.
Best regards,
C. Bloom
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." Abraham Lincoln
"If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee." Abraham Lincoln
While I appreciate your opposition illininage, the translation is "Money talks, hikers walk (by towers while talking to their brokers). The Ed Abby way is the only way to keep them out. Not that I would EVER puplicly support such activities.
OK I'll bite. What's the Ed Abby way?
"It was on the first of May, in the year 1769, that I resigned my domestic happiness for a time, and left my family and peaceable habitation on the Yadkin River, in North Carolina, to wander through the wilderness of America." - Daniel Boone
"always pull up survey stakes, anywhere you find them. anywhere."
the words of abbey
"The rancher strings barbed wire across the range, drills wells and bulldozes stock ponds everywhere, drives off the elk and antelope and bighorn sheep, poisons coyotes and prairie dogs, shoots eagle and bear and cougar on sight, supplants the native bluestem and grama grass with tumbleweed, cow ****, cheat grass, snakeweed, anthills, poverty weed, mud and dust and flies--and then leans back and smiles broadly at the Tee Vee cameras and tells us how much he loves the West."
more words of abbey
"I'd rather kill a man than a snake. Not because I love snakes or hate men. It is a question, rather, of proportion." Edward Abbey
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