Dispute over KOWS radio tower goes to Sebastopol City Council

The Sebastopol City Council tonight will wade into a dispute over plans to install a 65-foot-tall radio tower and antenna on a plot of city-owned land south of town, surrounded by rural county residences.

Neighbors from the area are asking the council to overturn a vote by city planning commissioners narrowly approving use of the property for a latticed, stainless steel tower that would boost reception for KOWS 107.3 FM, a nonprofit community radio station that serves west Sonoma County.

Supporters of the 8-year-old station say the project is needed to reach more people - including potential listeners in Sebastopol and west Santa Rosa - outside the range of an antenna currently perched in a Douglas fir tree at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center.

They say they approached the city of Sebastopol about its 3.39-acre municipal lot at 1281 Pleasant Hill Road last fall in part because the location would enable the station’s low-power signal to get beyond a north-south ridge line along Grandview Road. The site between Elphick and Lynch roads already is used for two 3 million-gallon water storage tanks and related structures and equipment. The antenna would be set back 500 feet from the road at the farthest, southeast corner, in an attempt to limit its visual impact.

In deference to unexpected community opposition to a 70-foot-tall, 24-inch-wide structure, station members recently proposed a 60-foot tower that tapers to 12 inches at the top and has a 5-foot-long, 2-inch pipe at the top.

“We just hope to squeeze the profile and the silhouette and the size down so we can minimize the impact, the visual impact,” steering committee member Arnold Levine said.

But neighbors are opposed in principal to placing a towering antenna in the middle of a countryside that includes adjacent vineyards, orchards and rural property. They say the city would be imposing the unsightly structure on county landowners whose properties surround the city lot, an island in the county.

Neighboring vineyard and orchard owner Bob Jenkins and his wife went so far as to acquire a 6-foot-wide, red weather balloon that they filled with helium and tethered 70 feet in the air to mimic the appearance of the tower, taking photographs from the surrounding terrain.

Citing everything from property devaluation to inadequate environmental review to health concerns related to electromagnetic fields, at least 160 individuals have reportedly joined him in opposing the project.

One of them, middle school teacher Andrea Hagan-Schmitz, said a fundamental complaint is the planning commission’s assertion that a structure so out of keeping with the neighborhood did not warrant full environmental review.

“This is an industrial, ugly tower that serves such a small portion of the community, and it would negatively affect so many,” Hagan-Schmitz said.

“Is KOWS a valuable part of the community? You bet,” she said. “Are they so valuable that we can afford to put a tower on Pleasant Hill Road? No!”

Critics also argue that those interested in listening to KOWS could do so through live streaming on the Internet.

Levine said the debate has been fraught with misinformation and misrepresentation. He believes the visual impact of the narrow antenna structure - which will be painted flat green toward the bottom and gray-blue toward the top to further camouflage its appearance - has been overstated.

“If it was a commercial radio, fair enough,” he said, “but a ridiculously low-powered community radio is a whole other universe.”

Today’s 6 p.m. council meeting has been relocated to the Sebastopol Community Center, 390 Morris St. It also will be streamed online at http://bit.ly/sebcctv.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary ?Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@?pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter ?@MaryCallahanB.