Cell towers & data centers
Communities are fed up with being sold out
What do cell towers and those monster data centers have in common? People are fed up with those in charge selling out their communities to wealthy corporations.
In the case of a proposed cell tower on bucolic Sauvie Island, many local residents think the Sauvie Island Grange sold them out by signing a lease with Verizon to allow the corporation to build a 160-foot cell tower. The tower would be the tallest thing on the island by a factor of 2, dwarfing even the stately Wapato Bridge that brings motor vehicle traffic, cyclists and pedestrians from the mainland. As anyone crosses the bridge, the cell tower would likely stand out like a monolith among much smaller mature trees. Think Jack and the Beanstalk, except this beanstalk will be covered with transponders amid an invisible cloud of RF radiation.
This metal beanstalk, rising from a 3,000-foot lot with others structures and a generator, would be 250 feet from an elementary school, something that just seems wrong on its face.
I wrote my Finger Lakes Times column about this proposed project and a company- staffed meeting held to help sell the idea to local residents. It didn’t seem to me like very many of them who attended were willing to drink the Verizon or Vertical Bridge Kool-aid. My full column is printed below.
And data centers? Read about what happened in Festus, Missouri where the fight continues against a sleazy deal in which the city council approved a data center. This kind of backlash is happening all over the country. Festus Residents are realllllly angry.
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Write On from the May 15, 2026 Finger Lakes Times
Ghosts of Inergy & Crestwood at cell-tower meeting
By Michael J. Fitzgerald
An industry-sponsored public get together about a proposal to build a massive 160-foot tall cell tower adjacent to an elementary school on agricultural Sauvie Island near Portland, can best be described by a classic Yogi Berra expression.
“It was deja vu all over again.”
Yogi’s oddball phrase got stuck in my mind earlier this week like a musical earworm as I cruised through a large room of tables and displays where shills, excuse me, experts, offered well-practiced explanations about the proposed cell tower, cell tower technology and safety.
It was as if the Vertical Bridge and Verizon corporations hired the same public relations gunslingers who staffed a presentation for the Inergy Corporation decades ago in the Finger Lakes. That meeting was held to persuade Schuyler County residents that a risky proposal to store liquid propane gas in salt caverns near Watkins Glen was actually a great idea. Inergy was the predecessor of Crestwood Midstream, the Texas-based corporation that pushed unsuccessfully for years to get the LPG storage approved.
Click the photo to link to what I wrote in 2011, when Inergy was first lobbying the community and local governments about its storage project.
Beyond slick public relation’s efforts, there are other similarities between the failed LPG storage proposal and the cell tower project.
Both are in pristine agricultural areas with abundant tourism nearby. Both claim (or claimed) a high level of public need. Both are (or were) proposed by corporations with deep pockets to fend off legal challenges. Both have (or had) vulnerable Achilles’ heels.
Residents of the Finger Lakes ultimately didn’t want LPG stored in gas caverns where they live, swim, boat and play.
The Sauvie Island cell tower is proposed to be built on a 3,000 square foot, Grange-owned lot amid a grove of tall trees. Some of those rather magnificent trees will be felled to clear space for the tower, associated buildings and equipment.
Neighbors and opponents have been asking Grange officials for many months to see the lease signed with the cell tower developers. The president says firmly that only Grange members are allowed access to the document. But opponents - some of whom are Grange members in good standing - are not being allowed to get a peek, raising suspicions about what kind of deal might have been cut.
That bit of Nixon-like secrecy over the lease isn’t the biggest cell-tower Achilles heel, the proximity of the elementary school is.
Some parents of children at the Sauvie Island school are horrified that the proposed tower (to be festooned with transponders) will be a scant 250 feet away from the school. Tower advocates poo-poo any talk of danger from expected RF radiation to students or anyone nearby. But if enough worried parents decide to disenroll their kids, it could create a serious fiscal crisis, perhaps bad enough to trigger closure of the popular, high-performing charter school.
The public-relations tactics used by Inergy in Watkins Glen over a decade ago were clearly evident on Sauvie Island at the Grange-hosted soiree. Residents weren’t offered an opportunity to ask questions so everyone could hear the answer at the same time. Instead, people had to scurry among stations scattered around the room to make individual inquiries. Attendees comparing notes later found answers inconsistent, incomplete or stretching the truth.
The Inergy meeting in Watkins had the reverse effect of its sell-the-project intention. It helped spark the creation of the Gas Free Seneca organization (now Seneca Lake Guardian). It also led to the creation of the We Are Seneca Lake group, hundreds of members of which were arrested for blocking the gates at Crestwood. I witnessed many police van loads of protesters carted off to Schuyler County Jail for refusing to move. I also sat in on trials of the protesters, all charged with trespassing.
The nascent Sauvie Island activist movement to stop the cell tower project very likely got a big boost of community support from the meeting as well as adding some new, fired-up members based on what they heard - and didn’t hear - at the orchestrated show-and-tell event.
How big a boost? Certainly enough to riff a catchy group name based on Seneca Lake’s uber-successful activist Gas Free Seneca.
How about calling it Cell Free Sauvie? I can see T-shirts, hats and bold signs already.
Fitzgerald has worked at six newspapers as a writer and editor as well as a correspondent for two news services. He splits his time between Valois, N.Y., and the Pacific Northwest. You can email him at Michael.Fitzgeraldfltcolumnist@gmail.com and visit his websites at michaeljfitzgerald.blogspot.com and michaeljfitzgerald.substack.com.