Foothills MD residents are up in arms over four, 350-foot radio towers that could be erected near their homes south of Black Diamond.
Area residents and MD officials are not happy with the plan after more than 40 people turned out at a May 2 open house for the proposal to voice their concerns.
“It wasn’t a great meeting,” said Heather McInnes, development officer for the Municipal District of Foothills.
Touch Canada Broadcasting held a public consultation meeting at the Turner Valley Golf Club on the proposed development of four AM towers along Highway 22 about five kilometers south of Black Diamond.
The towers will be used to transmit a new AM Christian radio service to Calgary and surrounding areas, which has already received licensing from the CRTC.
While the MD required the meeting to be held, the company does not require the municipality’s support in their application.
“Industry Canada does have the last say,” said McInnes.
Although broadcast companies apply to Industry Canada for permission to construct towers, they must also follow specific protocol set out by the municipality in which the proposed site is located, said McInnes.
The Industry Canada process require companies to investigate sharing or using existing infrastructure before proposing new towers, to contact the land-use authority to determine local requirements regarding antenna systems, and satisfy certain safety and technical requirements.
Finally, companies must notify residents living within a one-mile radius of the proposed site and hear their concerns before construction begins, said McInnes.
However, McInnes said she didn’t feel the company’s representatives sufficiently answered residents’ concerns at the May 2 meeting.
“The residents felt their voices weren’t heard,” she said. “As it stands, the MD of Foothills will be showing non-support for the application.”
Contributing to residents’ frustrations was the fact the meeting took place on election night, and during what many considered an inconvenient time from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Although the meeting was scheduled before news of a federal election, McInnes said the company did have an opportunity to reschedule.
However, Allan Pippin, general contractor for the site, said Touch Canada had already coordinated extensive travel plans far in advance of the meeting, so chose not to reschedule. The golf club venue had also already been booked and could not be rescheduled as the course was opening the next day, he said.
“Postponing to a later date would have involved advising an awful lot of people, and we consulted with the MD and decided we should just move ahead with it,” said Pippin.
McInnes said many residents were also perturbed over an incorrect legal description of the proposed development sent in letters to residents.
“People thought the site was way south of Black Diamond when it was actually in their area, and some residents didn’t receive the corrected letters until the day after the meeting,” she said.
Pippin admitted there was a typo in the initial letter, but noted it had passed through the MD’s staff without anyone picking up the mistake either. When the mistake was pointed out, it was quickly corrected, he said.
“These things happen,” he said.
While Touch Canada has technically followed the MD’s policies and procedures, McInnes said residents were still not happy with how the meeting unfolded.
“Unfortunately because of some of the screw ups and the unfortunate timing of the election date, it probably didn’t help them,” she said.
Patrick Landes, an MD resident whose home is located near the proposed site, was one of them.
“There was no sincerity in the meeting at all,” said Landes. “We were being played for fools.”
Landes believes the towers will be an eyesore along the picturesque Cowboy Trail.
“However benign the applicants say the towers are going to be, there’s nothing benign about them,” said Landes. “They’re going to be right beside the highway.”
As a retired commercial photographer experienced in the tourism industry, Landes said it’s important for a tourist destination like the Cowboy Trail to appear in person like images used in brochures.
“I dealt with people who went to destination points sold just on specific pictures, and when the image they met didn’t match the picture they saw, some of them were very visibly upset,” said Landes.
Pippin disagreed the towers will be disruptive to the views along the highway, adding that Touch Canada showed residents at the meeting photos of similar towers located on a site near Edmonton.
“They’re very thin towers,” said Pippin. “They’re going to be 275 metres away from Highway 22 … It’s not going to have much of a visual impact.”
Pippin added the towers’ lighting system means they won’t have to be painted red and white like other broadcast towers.
“The neutral galvanized grey-ish colour just fades right into a blue sky or an overcast sky condition,” he said.
Royal LePage realtor Sam Johnson of Black Diamond said the towers will negatively affect property values in the area.
“I don’t think it’s fair to the people who live there to have somebody from out of town coming in on a commercial venture for them to make money at our expense,” said Johnson.
Johnson agreed with Landes the meeting was not handled well.
“They just rammed it down our throats so far,” he said. “Nobody was listening. The meeting was for no reason. Everything had already been decided.
“The meeting was just to appease the public. They even said that.”
However, Pippin said the proposed site for the towers, the land of which was purchased several ago by Charles Allard, CEO and owner of Touch Canada, is one of the only sites that can be used to broadcast an AM frequency.
“The optimum performance for the antenna system is pretty much where Mr. Allard purchased the property for it several years ago,” he said.
As a result of the MD’s policies and procedures, Touch Canada must also show it has explored all options for collocation before they municipality will provide support. Collocation involves sharing an existing tower through a lease with another broadcast company.
Although Touch Canada has explored collocation for FM services in the past, Pippin said an AM tower is much more complex.
“With an AM tower, the array consists of four towers and a property of about 400 by 400 metres. Most cellular sites are less than 100 metres square,” said Pippin. “Collocation is almost an impossibility between an AM broadcast site and a TV or FM or cellular telecommunications broadcast.”
Touch Canada representatives said they have contacted existing tower owners to see if their facilities could be used or the new radio service. CBC and Bell Canada have said neither have any suitable towers, while Telus and Rogers Wireless have not yet returned the request.
Despite residents’ concerns, Pippin said he believed the May 2 meeting went smoothly.
“There were a lot of questions, and I think most of the questions were answered reasonably well,” he said.
Touch Canada has yet to submit their final documentation to the municipality. McInnes said the MD hasn’t yet made their final decision on whether they will support the application to Industry Canada.
In the meantime, McInnes has been collecting letters from concerned residents that she will provide to Touch Canada.
“If the MD still doesn’t feel that they have sufficiently answered those questions, and haven’t pursued all avenues for collocation on another tower for that area, then we’ll show non-support towards their application to Industry Canada,” said McInnes.
Still, there is still little recourse for the municipality if the application is approved.
Landes said the lack of an appeal process is infuriating to residents.
“They met the narrowest possible criteria they could to go back to Industry Canada and say to them, ‘Yes, we’ve done our job, so give us the go ahead,” said Landes. “But there’s nothing for the people who are going to have to live with it.”
