UPDATE Sioux Falls Tower President/CEO Craig Snyder thinks tribal review fees for macro towers are out of control and he would love to see the FCC do something about it. He agrees with American Tower, that siting regulations for macro towers need to be updated. AMT supports what the FCC plans to vote on next week to help ease small cell siting, and recently urged the Commission to consider giving relief to macro tower owners as they face rising siting costs and delays. That’s important now, according to AMT, as 5G will need a mix of small cell and macro tower deployment.
Just this week, Sioux Falls Tower finished a 10-month regulatory approval process for a 49-foot tower at its new 25,000 square foot training facility. Snyder shared the hurdles the company had to jump through over the 10-month process, with Inside Towers. Getting approval from the FAA and Minnehaha County was not onerous, at about 30 days and five days respectively, according to the executive.
But the next steps were tough, as the company prepared for FCC registration, so Sioux Falls could offer space to carriers for co-location. That required lengthy NEPA and tribal review. 142 tribes have expressed an interest in commenting on towers being sited in South Dakota, according to Snyder. About 35 tribes responded to the company’s siting notification and asked for review.
Their fees totaled nearly $27,000. The lowest fee charged was zero from the Fort Peck Tribes, and the next-to-lowest was $350 from the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, according to information Snyder shared with Inside Towers. The highest was $1,800 charged by the Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma. Just under that was the $1,500 charged by the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska and the Prairie Island Indian Community.
None of the tribes visited the site and all granted the company’s request to proceed with FCC registration of the site, according to Snyder. “The total cost to build the site including materials and labor was about $32,000,” he tells Inside Towers. “Tribal review alone nearly equaled the cost to build the site!”
To recap, he says the company, “leveled a six acre parcel of land with giant earth moving equipment, put up a 25,000 square foot x 30-foot tall building, and built a 49-foot tower with no federal review or tribal review. Then, in order to register the tower with the FCC we were forced to go through extensive environmental review (NEPA) and tribal review which took months and cost tens of thousands of dollars even though the tower was already up and was an allowed use as a training tower without federal review.”
Snyder “strongly” encourages the FCC to include macro towers under the rules adopted this year, that streamlined environmental and tribal review for small cell siting. He calls the federal and tribal reviews “a deterrent to both the broadband build-out, a delay in the race to 5G, and a shake-down by tribes, who it seems care less about the placement of towers as the review fees they bring to their treasuries.”
“At a minimum, the tribes should be limited to reviewing towers in, or adjacent to, their lands and even then be limited in the fees charged,” says Snyder. Comments? Email us.
by Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief
September 20, 2018
