ST. JOHNSBURY, Vt. (AP) – A cellular phone company must lower its proposed communications tower in Waterford, the District 7 environmental board has said.

Members of the board told Nextel Communications Inc. on Thursday to shorten the proposed 140-foot tower if it wants to gain Act 250 approval.

“One of the things we found out with the original towers, was that between 70 and 120 feet, there wasn’t much of a (signal propagation) loss,” said District 7 coordinator Charles Gallagher, referring to applications submitted by ATC Realty a couple of years ago. “At the end of the day, they accepted lower towers.”

ATC Realty never built the towers it had proposed for Danville, Waterford, Concord and Kirby.

Act 250 board member Eugene Reid said he was hesitant to approve such a tall tower in an undisturbed landscape. The tower would rise 70 feet above the deciduous tree line on Fairbanks Mountain.

“It is above the tree line quite a bit,” Reid said. “I’m going to give my pincushion lecture. If we stick those things all over the place, we’re going to look like a big pincushion. We try to keep these close to the tree line.”

On a positive note, Gallagher said, the site, owned by the Helicon Group doing business as Charter Communications, has three existing communications towers ranging in height from 50 to 80 feet and a passable road, which lends itself to further development.

Nextel, a digital communications company based in Albany, N.Y., has more than 60 antenna sites in Vermont, said Nextel representative Joe Papa. The company tries to use existing water towers and silos to house the towers, he said. In the Northeast Kingdom, Nextel provides cell phone service from Newport to St. Johnsbury. The company has antennas on the North Congregational Church in St. Johnsbury, the Newport Country Club in Newport and on Prospect Hill in Lyndonville.

The proposed tower on Fairbanks Mountain would extend cellular phone coverage east from St. Johnsbury along Interstate 91 and Interstate 93 towards Littleton, N.H., Papa said. There is no coverage in that area currently, he said.

AP-ES-01-22-05 1030EST