Anti-Tower Power On Queen Anne -- Stations' Expansion Plans Fought

Linda Dagg, who lives on Queen Anne Hill, installed a telephone in her upstairs bathroom last week. It plays music.

Other residents claim their answering machines and hearing aids also pick up radio signals. Their televisions turn on and their garage doors open by themselves.

These occurrences have become a part of everyday life for some Queen Anne residents who, like Dagg, live near the KOMO, KING and KIRO broadcast towers.

"Everyone in Queen Anne has problems," said Sharon LeVine, a Queen Anne resident and member of Citizens Against Tower Expansion, a group formed by 37 concerned residents in January to oppose the towers. "If you drive through here with radar detectors, they go crazy."

OPPOSITION GROWS

Now, the list of Queen Anne residents who support CATE has grown to 2,000.

Recently it joined forces with five other community groups to fight plans to make the broadcast towers even taller. Together, they hope to spread the word that the red and white, protruding towers that have been atop the hill for about 40 years pose a possible health and physical threat to nearby residents.

The towers also decrease property values - and they're just plain ugly to look at, LeVine said.

"Our group represents the viewpoints of the vast majority of the citizens of this city," LeVine said. "It's not a NIMBY issue. We're saying (towers are) inappropriate in all these neighborhoods."

The controversy has intensified in recent weeks with City Councilwoman Sue Donaldson's proposal to limit the height of the broadcast towers to 660 feet. Donaldson will present the proposal Wednesday to the Land Use Committee, which will vote on it July 22.

The KOMO, KING and KIRO radio and television broadcast towers are currently 556 feet, 573 feet and 613 feet, respectively. KING-TV wants to replace its tower with a new one 919 feet high, and the other stations say they want to do the same.

Donaldson said she is steering the dispute away from the height of the towers with her proposal and is focusing on a more important issue: relocating the towers outside the city.

"There is a lot of enthusiasm for this proposal because it addresses the concerns people have and broadcast people have about the future of towers in this city," Donaldson said. "The point is we don't have appropriate locations (for the towers) in this city so it's really a county, state and federal issue and we need to address it that way."

Donaldson's position is that the three stations hoping to expand will have to look elsewhere to do it. Her proposal would force broadcasters to leave residential areas if they want to do a major expansion.

While existing city policy prohibits putting new television towers in neighborhoods, it does allow expansion of existing towers under certain restrictions.

CATE supporters say tearing an existing tower down to build a taller one constitutes "new construction," not expansion.

Some station officials say they face a difficult position because they want to expand their towers in anticipation of the Federal Communications Commission's plans to upgrade broadcasting technology in the next 15 years.

Gina Harrison, FCC staff attorney, said the agency will eventually cease to allow conventional broadcasting in its efforts to phase into what's called high-definition television.

Broadcasters that want preference in broadcasting on the new standards have to build a new transmission facility within five years.

KOMO, KING and KIRO applied to the city in 1986 to increase the height of their towers, said Chuck Morris, vice president of engineering for KIRO Inc.

The need became more urgent, he said, after the Columbia Center was completed downtown in the early 1980s, interfering with transmissions to the north and northwest.

"One of the biggest problems we have is that state of the art is changing so rapidly for us so that we don't know what's going to happen," Morris said. "We feel we need to serve the community to the best of our ability and, if they put a cap on us, it's going to restrict our ability to do that."

KING-TV MAY CONTEST

Brian Lay, engineering manager for KING-TV, said if the height restriction is passed his station intends to fight.

"It's been a long process and we're not going to give up now," Lay said. "We're going to present our side of it and try to see it through.

"For TV transmission, the higher (the tower) the better, especially here with all the hills. We're constantly fighting the problem of not being able to reach some shadow areas."

Morris said broadcasters are trying to better serve the people, and taller towers will help them reach more.

"It seems like all the talk that's going around is that broadcasters are money-grabbers and nothing else and that's not true," Morris said. "We provide a tremendous public service, just like grocery stores. I'd like to turn off all radio and TV for 24 hours and see what happens."

RECEPTION PROBLEMS

Neighbors of the television towers on Queen Anne, who say their reception is so strong they have to pay for cable in order to receive good transmission, are not impressed by the stations' performances.

CATE supporters have banded together with the Queen Anne Community Council, Concerned Greenwood Neighbors, Capitol Hill Community Council, Miller Park Neighborhood Association and the Myrtle Street Reservoir Residents to show that they're not happy with the telecommunications policies and want the towers moved outside city limits.

"It's real important for people to know that, although the tower is in other places, you can still have good TV," said Karen Clark, secretary of CATE and a Queen Anne resident.

The towers "can be built far away from cities and still be able to watch all our TVs, and those of us who live right next to these towers will finally get reception."