Bethany moving ahead with planning for a new water tower

Early this week, as Bethany Beach Town Council members prepared to discuss and possibly vote at their Jan. 20 meeting on whether the Town will host AT&T’s cell phone equipment on its water standpipe, attention turned not to the existing standpipe and the controversial proposal but to the need for a new water tower.

At a Jan. 17 council workshop, with a handful of concerned citizens in attendance in expectation that the cell equipment issue would be discussed, Town Manager Cliff Graviet clarified that the water tower discussion on the workshop agenda was actually the even longer-running, but likely less divisive, issue of how the Town will move forward with plans to address the need for a secondary storage location for its water.

“From a risk-management perspective,” he said, “we have to have another storage device to store a significant amount of water.”

Previously, the Town has explored the possible construction of a new, additional water tower at a few locations on town-owned property. Lately, Graviet noted, the consideration had focused on the former Christian Church/Neff property that the town purchased in 2004 with tentative plans to use it as parkland.

But the firm the Town had contracted to provide designs, analysis and computer-assisted design (CAD) drawings of what a water tower might look like in that location didn’t complete the work as quickly or as completely as the Town had hoped, Graviet explained. Provided only with a draft analysis, some basic pictures and drawings, and incomplete data, he noted, the Town was going to move away from that contractor and work with two other companies that could provide information and a plan for a building a new water tower somewhere on the Church/Neff property.

“We’re behind the proverbial 8-ball on this,” Graviet said of the additional time constraints on the project due to the false start with the original contractor.

He also noted that town engineering consultants Kercher Engineering (KEI) had previously helped the Town with an analysis of the potential locations for a new water tower, leading to the conclusion that the current water plant facility on Collins Street – the site proposed for the AT&T cell antenna equipment – would not accommodate the new water tower and that, likely, the only suitable site was the Church/Neff property.

Council members noted on Jan. 17 that the recommended size of the new water tower had increased since it was first proposed, increasing even from Kercher’s recommendation of a 750,000 gallon tank to a tank that would contain more than a million gallons under the most recent recommendations.

With one of the concerns about the town’s water supply being the lack of adequate turnover of water in the existing standpipe during low-usage periods, some council members said they were skeptical of making the proposed new tower even larger in size.

“Whoever we engage will come back with more detail and will justify the size,” Graviet assured them. “The last engineering firm said that national standards mandated a larger tank,” he noted. “But the Water Department doesn’t necessarily think that. It’s one of the questions to be answered with the next firm.”

“That takes our aesthetic off the table,” commented Councilman Lew Killmer of the larger tank recommendation. “It’s hard to hide a big water tank.”

But Councilman Joseph Healy said he believed the larger size was something the Town might have to accept for practical reasons.

“Redundancy is a big issue here,” he said, referencing the fact that the new tower would also be intended to create a dual supply system so that, when maintenance was needed on one tank or there were problems with one of them, the other could be used until repairs and maintenance were complete.

“We wouldn’t want to reduce the size and reduce redundancy,” Healy added.

Council members on Jan. 17 supported Graviet’s plan to consult with the two engineering consulting firms to develop a plan for the new water tower, which is expected to eventually be located somewhere on the Church/Neff property.

AT&T proposal for use of town’s water facility set for Friday vote

While council members did not discuss at their workshop this week the AT&T proposal for use of the town standpipe to house the company’s antenna arrays, that subject was expected to be a hot-button issue when it comes up at their monthly council meeting on Jan. 20, with significant opposition already voiced by some nearby residents and others favoring it over another controversial site on Route 1.

Previously, the council had deferred discussion of the proposal on at least two occasions due to a lack of requested information having come from Velocitel on behalf of AT&T. The Town received a new set of information from Velocitel in mid-December, so a potential vote was set for the council’s January meeting.

The information from Velocitel includes drawings of two potential arrangements for AT&T’s equipment at the water treatment and storage facility off Collins Street, with the difference between the two being the location of the equipment shelter needed for the installation.

One option calls for the shelter to be placed inside the fenced area of the facility, which Velocitel’s Michael Schmidt said would require rerouting an existing concrete walkway – something he said would be done at AT&T’s expense – but would minimize the distance between the shelter and the standpipe and allow existing vegetation to help screen it from view.

The second option would place the shelter just outside the fence, in the northwest corner of the parcel that houses the water facility. Council members have previously expressed concern about locating AT&T’s equipment inside the secured facility, due to potential security hazards, such as someone tampering with the water supply. Eliminating or reducing the need for AT&T workers to access areas inside the fence could help alleviate those concerns.

“AT&T certainly understands the Town’s desire to protect its water supply,” he wrote in the Dec. 19 letter. “Because our communications system must remain operational at all times, AT&T does need access to its equipment 24-hours a day/7-days a week. However, we are very willing to work with the Town on reasonable access procedures in order to maintain a secure site.”

Schmidt said routine maintenance can usually be completed within normal business hours and that the company follows special access procedures for after-hours access, ranging from having a lockbox outside the fence to having AT&T calling a designated water department employee or making arrangements with police for access.

He also noted that AT&T has, in the past, provided information on personnel who may be accessing the site so that background checks could be performed on anyone who would be given access.

Schmidt also addressed a second issue that council members have expressed concern about in the past: the impact of the actual installation on the town’s water supply, given that the water is treated at the site. He said the fact that the water is treated on the ground and then stored in the tank would mean that AT&T’s use of the tank itself would not impact the treatment process.

Additionally, he pointed out that AT&T has wireless sites at other water facilities in Delaware and New Jersey where water is treated on-site, both on the ground and in the storage tanks. He provided contact information for those facilities so the Town can contact them to confirm there was no negative impact from the installation.

Addressing concerns about the impact of the welding of the antenna mounts to the standpipe, Schmidt said the design would be prepared by a licensed professional engineer and that the welding would be done in a manner approved by a town engineer. He noted also that AT&T in the past has hired a third-party tank inspection company to do pre- and post-construction inspections and that they would be amenable to doing so in this case.

Finally, Schmidt addressed concerns that the radio emissions from the antennas would make installation at the Collins Street facility unsafe for nearby residents.

“Given the relatively low power of AT&T’s wireless sites and the fact that the antennas would be mounted approximately 115 feet in the air, the electromagnetic energy levels generated by the site will be significantly below the FCC Guidelines for Human Exposure to Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields,” he said.

He also offered that AT&T could, at the Town’s request, have an RF Emissions Compliance Report prepared by a license engineer to demonstrate that, even at maximum operating power, the site will still be well below the FCC standard, “and therefore safe to the public.”

The council will discuss the proposal at their Jan. 20 council meeting, which is set for 2 p.m. at town hall, and could take a vote at that time as to whether to enter into an agreement with AT&T on the issue.

The location at the town water facility is considered as an alternative to the proposed facility at the Arby’s and gas station just south of town limits, on Route 1. The Sussex County Board of Adjustments had previously approved the facility there, on a 3-2 vote, but a court appeal by nearby property owners threw out that decision in favor of a new hearing when irregularities in the legal advertising and posting for the BoA hearing were noted. The BoA subsequently rejected the AT&T tower proposal on a 5-0 vote, once the new hearing was held.

AT&T, in the meantime, had erected a temporary tower at that site, which the opponents of the tower there have also opposed and challenged in court, asking that AT&T be forced to remove it since the tower was never legally approved. The temporary tower remains in place. Arguments in that case took place last month, in a closed session in the judge’s chambers in Georgetown. No decision has been announced.