FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has a “keen interest”...
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has a “keen interest” in improving the environmental compliance and historic preservation review process that’s critical to the buildout of wireless facilities, FCC Wireless Bureau Chief Roger Sherman said in brief remarks at the start of…
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an FCC workshop Tuesday. Sherman said the issues “span many bureaus” and must be addressed “agency-wide.” The FCC sees National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) rules as “important legal obligations” and the FCC intends to meet its obligations “in a manner that best advances our primary mission of making communications services available to the public,” he said. Wheeler wants FCC staff to look for ways “we can streamline, expedite and simplify” enforcement of the rules, he said. “Stay tuned for developments in this area.” Sherman said the FCC has relied on two key programmatic agreements for more than 10 years on compliance with the NHPA, covering collocation of wireless antennas and telecommunications projects (http://1.usa.gov/UGFVR2). The programmatic agreements “turned what had been a completely disorganized mess into a basically functioning series of steps,” said Jeffrey Steinberg, deputy chief of the bureau’s Spectrum and Competition Policy Division. The workshop updated various siting topics, including the Antenna Structure Registration Process and communications towers and archeology. Roger Kirchen, compliance manager at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, said, given the layers of history in the state, carriers face “a really complex environment” as they build out facilities. The state alone has 122 Civil War battlefield study areas, covering 1.2 million acres, he said. “That leaves probably about 10 acres in which you can build cell towers in Virginia,” Kirchen joked. Joelle Gehring, an FCC biologist, said the agency is required to look at endangered plants as well as animals as it reviews siting applications.