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Property owners near Railroad Avenue convinced Del Norte County supervisors Tuesday that their neighborhood isn’t the best spot for a 136-foot tall cell phone tower, even if it looks like a pine tree.

Supervisors told Verizon Wireless agent Kevin Gallagher and Paul Albritton, the provider’s outside counsel, to keep looking despite Gallagher’s assertion that 2801 Railroad Avenue was the best of 13 options.

District 4 Supervisor Joey Borges, who represents residents in the area, called upon those who opposed the tower to help Verizon come up with other alternatives.

“It sounds like they’re more than willing to explore other options, but we need these ideas,” he said. “If you have the locations, if you have the options, bring them forward. If you can’t get a hold of [Verizon] send it to me, I’ll forward it on.”


Gallagher and Albritton went before the Board of Supervisors after the Del Norte County Planning Commission denied Verizon Wireless a conditional use permit on March 6. The site is in an area that, under the county's general plan, is zoned for small-scale commercial and hobby agriculture.

According to the county’s staff report, that denial came after residents stated the tower would degrade their idyllic backdrops, have negative impact on wildlife and domestic animals and would increase artificial noise in the area. The use permit was also denied due to a lack of evidence showing that a gap in cell phone service exists, according to the county's report.

On Tuesday, one resident, Alana Sparks, who left the Bay Area about seven years ago, became emotional at the thought of seeing a cell phone tower from her home.

“The day I came here in October 2017, I stood in that kitchen and I thought, ‘This is beautiful. It’s serene, it’s quiet, this is what I need to retire and enjoy the rest of my life that I’ve worked so hard for,’” she said. “Fifteen windows to look at that beautiful forest and pasture, that we put our hard earned money into purchasing, to live at, and now there’s going to be this that I moved away from.”

On Tuesday, Gallagher told supervisors that Verizon began searching for suitable sites to build a new cell phone tower after identifying a service gap in the Lake Earl area north of Crescent City in 2022. This includes a one-mile gap in service for motorists traveling along U.S. 101 and nearby streets.

The provider contracted with San Bernardino based The Towers LLC in September 2023 to build the cell phone tower, Gallagher said.
Existing facilities to the north and south of the proposed site are nearing data capacity, Gallagher told supervisors.

During a 10-day period, the tower north of the proposed Railroad Avenue site was at 100 percent capacity during the day. The tower to the south of Railroad Avenue, at the Del Norte County Fairgrounds, wasn’t as bad, Gallagher said, but it too is nearing 100 percent “for a good chunk of the day.”

“What slow data means is that everything is compromised — voice calls, streaming, video — everything is data,” he said. “When that capacity is high, when that capacity is at 100 percent, the throughput [data speed] crashes and that lowers the reliability of service in the area.”

The proposed 5-acre site on Railroad Avenue is zoned for agricultural use so there are no height restrictions, Gallagher said. The 136-foot faux tree would be surrounded by real trees of comparable height, some taller than 140 feet others shorter than 130 feet, he said.

The closest home was 200 feet to the west. The tower would be inside a 40 by 40 foot fenced enclosure with a 6-foot tall chainlink fence, though Gallagher said Verizon agreed to construct a wooden fence that would lower the sound by 5 decibels.

The facility would have an emergency generator enabling the tower to provide service during a power outage. The Towers has also offered free space on the facility for public safety antennas, Gallagher said.

“One common question [we get] is why can’t we get into a more industrial area,” he said. “The answer there is those sites will not fill coverage gaps. That leaves us with this as the best option.”

Responding to the opposition, Albritton argued that Verizon isn’t obligated to show a coverage gap. A potential negative impact to property values is also not part of the county’s land-use code, he argued. Albritton further argued that the cell phone tower would be a positive thing to residents whose cell phone service reliability would increase.

“We feel we’ve done a very thorough job in trying to bring this facility forward,” he said. “We accelerated it because our crisis response team was here in August during the blackout and provided additional cell service during that high crisis time. We tried to bring our application forward to get it built before the next fire season.”

Albritton also addressed a question from Borges, who asked about building the tower further south near Recology Del Norte’s office.

Albritton said the area zoned for manufacturing and that under the county code, telephone wireless facilities are a public utility and aren’t allowed. There’s also a height restriction in the area of 75 feet, he said.

Building the tower in an agricultural zone avoids the height restriction and allows for public utilities to be constructed, Albritton said.

“We don’t want to open a window for a neighbor lawsuit because of a misinterpretation of the code or something else,” he said. “A variance also for heights is very difficult to defend. You have to show that there’s some special reason, special circumstances that allow us to get that. That it’s not an undue benefit to that property. That it doesn’t create an undue hardship or there is an undue hardship that we’re trying to resolve. So variances are very hard to defend.”

As for a potential threat to wildlife posed by the fake needles, Albritton cited the Lahontan Water Quality Control Board, which stated that a similar facility in Lake Tahoe posed no threat to water quality. The state Water Quality Control Board concurred with that finding and a lawsuit opposing that project was denied, Albritton said.

Residents living in the Railroad Drive area still raised concerns. Dave Restad, who owns 10 acres south of the proposed site, noted with a 136-foot tower, the needles will blow out of the 40-by-40 foot enclosure.

“The way the wind blows around here, you don’t hang your clothes out on a clothesline that’s 7 feet tall,” he said. “They’ve got metal in the plastic in those needles. The deer eat them, the elk eat them, it makes the elk feel full so they starve to death. They don’t eat.”

One resident, David Cooper, spoke up in support of the tower, though he said he sympathized with his neighbors. But when the electricity goes out, he said, so does his landline.

“My wife has COPD and other health issues,” he said. “If I need to make a 911 call to the very capable Del Norte Ambulance to get help, I have to go a mile and a half. I’m living with that, but it really would be nice not to have that as an issue.”

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