Cell phone tower? What cell phone tower?

If that lone redwood tree at the Balletto Ranch west of Santa Rosa and south of Guerneville Road looks odd, that’s because it is a fake.

So is the water tank atop a tower rising from a field west of Fulton Road at Wood Road.

Both would pass for the real thing, especially if one were distracted by, say, talking on a cell phone.

The imposter tree and tank are two of the rapidly propagating — and increasingly camouflaged — antenna towers that keep 270 million cell phone-owning Americans yakking for an astonishing 2.2 trillion minutes a year.

“It kind of blends in,” rancher John Balletto said of the quasi-natural tower erected on his land near Laguna de Santa Rosa four years ago. No way, Balletto said, would he have welcomed a bare steel structure there.

More than 242,000 cellular transmission sites dot the nation, 10 times as many as there were in 1995. Unincorporated Sonoma County has at least 200, with companies regularly seeking permission to erect more.

To minimize their impact on the landscape, cellular sites are increasingly presented as “stealth” facilities, masquerading as trees, flagpoles, church steeples and crosses, chimneys, water towers, grain silos and business signs.

Many are hiding in plain sight, unnoticed by casual observers.

“That’s the idea,” said Dave Hardy, a Sonoma County planner.

The $148 billion-a-year wireless industry has been devising ways to conceal the antennas that support a communication system used by nine out of 10 Americans.

“No one likes a tower in their back yard,” said Andrea Williams, a vice president of CTIA-The Wireless Association, a trade group.

About a mile south of the fake water tank on Fulton Road, a fake redwood stands in a grove of firs and eucalyptus next to the Church of Christ, its steel trunk painted brown, dark green bristles attached to its branches.

Up close, the thing is obviously lifeless, with pod-like antennas mounted high on the “tree,” silently sending and receiving cellular telephone signals.

Stealth applies to urban areas, as well. A smooth, round pipe with a domed top, meant to resemble an exhaust vent, protrudes from the roof of a building on the east side of Mendocino Avenue adjacent to Pacific Avenue. It is known as a “slim pole” antenna.

The latest local proposal calls for tucking six cellular antennas inside a 60-foot pole at city-owned Bennett Valley Golf Course on Yulupa Avenue. The “slim pole” structure would be 10 feet taller than the other poles supporting a safety net between the driving range and a restaurant.

It would take the place of a 90-foot pole originally proposed by AT&T Mobility but dropped last year amid concerns over its height. Sixty feet is the minimum height AT&T needs to improve coverage in the area, where residents complain of spotty cell service, and it will be largely concealed among trees, the project report says.

“I think it’s kind of a win-win for everybody,” city planner Noah Housh said.

Cellular companies pay up to $37,000 a year for five antennas on city water tanks. No fee has been set for the proposed golf course antenna.

The city’s Planning Commission will hold a public hearing Thursday6-25 on the proposal.

While in Sonoma County, some stealth towers resemble native redwoods, elsewhere they are cloaked as oaks or palm trees. A remarkably realistic saguaro cactus conceals cellular antennas in the desert foothills of suburban Tucson, Ariz.

At the dawn of the cellular age in 1985, there were 913 cellular transmission sites serving 340,213 subscribers in the United States, according to CTIA. Now, 242,130 sites serve 270.3 million subscribers, and the sites are spreading.

“People want connectivity,” said John Brittain of AT&T.

To provide seamless communication for people on the move, each company needs a network capable of bouncing calls from one antenna to another.

“That takes a lot of sites,” Brittain said. “You want customers to have a great experience.”

He declined to say how many cell transmission sites AT&T has in Sonoma County, calling it proprietary information.

Companies add sites to eliminate dead zones and to handle increasing traffic, said Hardy, who previously worked in the cellular industry.

Verizon, for example, recently acquired sites on River Road and above Monte Rio to improve coverage in the west county.

Demand for more cell towers also is driven by the addition of text, photo and video messaging to a communication system that started out carrying voices only.

A cell phone operates on radio waves, a form of electromagnetic radiation along with microwaves, X-rays and visible light.

The Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 precluded local governments from banning cellular transmission sites based on health concerns over radiation, Hardy said. Cities and counties retain discretion over design and location of the sites but cannot exclude them.

The county requires companies to show that their transmission sites meet federal standards for radiation emissions, Hardy said.

In its application for the stealth antenna site at the golf course, an AT&T consultant said instant, wireless phone service is now more than a modern convenience.

“It has become a way of life and a way of business,” the company said.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.