Convinced local officials were deadlocked and time was running out, Colorado Republican Sen. Wayne Allard decided to discreetly present a bill that would allow a digital TV tower to be built on Lookout Mountain in Jefferson County.
The bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., was introduced Wednesday in the U.S. Senate and approved later that night by unanimous consent. It was bundled with more than 30 bills deemed noncontroversial.
The proposal was forwarded to the House, where it passed on Saturday and now awaits President Bush’s signature.
If the new tower is not in place by Feb. 17, 2009 – the Federal Communications Commission’s deadline for digital transmissions – more than 600,000 metro-area residents who rely on free broadcast television would lose such service, Allard said.
“The choice is simple: We go digital or we go dark,” Allard said in a statement Saturday. “Going dark is not an option for the many Colorado households who rely on free over-the-air broadcasts … particularly those who cannot afford satellite or cable.”
The legislation, which would essentially push aside local jurisdiction on the matter, stunned Golden officials and activists who opposed the tower’s location.
“If this can be done to us, no community is safe from having their local rights taken away from them,” said Deb Carney, attorney for a group of Lookout Mountain-area homeowner associations – Canyon Area Residents for the Environment – that fought the tower.
Jefferson County officials had “no idea” the bill was coming, said Kevin McCasky, chairman of the Board of County Commissioners.
The county board has been considering a rezoning request from a local TV station consortium that has been seeking to build a 730-foot-high digital tower on Lookout Mountain since 1999.
The consortium, called Lake Cedar Group, contends Lookout Mountain is the best site to broadcast the widest coverage. Opponents have raised concerns about health effects, electronic interference and tower failure.
Seven years of rezoning hearings and court cases followed with the debate yet to be settled.
In Golden, e-mails and phone calls to city hall on Friday indicate “people are pretty outraged,” City Manager Mike Bes tor said.
“Even people who have no position on the tower have a position on fairness,” Bestor said. “People are upset with the process.”
The protracted battle over the Lake Cedar Group’s tower proposal led to Allard’s decision to have Congress intervene, said Sean Conway, Allard’s chief of staff. Two years are needed to take down the existing tower and put up the new one, he noted.
Negotiations had broken down with the city of Golden, Conway said, adding that Golden had stopped talking to Allard’s office in the past two months.
Allard had been waiting to introduce the bill, Conway said, because he was “holding out hope that some accommodation on the local level could be done.”
Still, Conway said, citizen concerns were considered when drafting the bill, noting that it requires the height to be lower than the highest existing tower, which is 834 feet.
Marv Rockford, spokesman for Lake Cedar Group, said Denver “is the only TV market of any consequence that has not deployed this technology.”
If the federal deadline is not met, the FCC could redeploy the current analog frequencies, Rockford said.
The TV consortium “had been talking to the Colorado congressional delegation for years” about the situation, Rockford said, including within the past week.
Salazar said congressional action was needed “to ensure that Colorado does not become a dark hole of digital broadcasting.”
All of the members of the Colorado delegation in the U.S. House were told about the bill early in the week and none objected, Conway said.
Salazar spokesman Drew Nannis said Allard, as bill sponsor, handled the timing. “We had an opportunity to get this done, and we took it,” Nannis said. “To paint the timing as something nefarious or underhanded is simply wrong.”
Republican Reps. Bob Beauprez and Tom Tancredo and Democrat Mark Udall – who represent portions of Jefferson County – did not immediately respond Friday to requests for comment about the legislation.
The debate’s tenor shifted for Allard in April when Golden began a condemnation action for the 65-acre proposed tower site on Lookout Mountain, Conway said. The property is owned by the TV stations and is outside of Golden.
Bestor said the congressional action “doesn’t impact our ability to use eminent domain.” He also suggested there could be a challenge to the legislation’s constitutionality.
Staff writer Ann Schrader can be reached at 303-278-3217 or aschrader@denverpost.com.
