Lake/Fishing Bridge Cell Tower - Still Can’t Get It Right

The cell tower near Yellowstone Lake and Fishing Bridge is the latest piece of cellular infrastructure approved by Park officials.  Yet despite prior missteps, Yellowstone’s handling of this tower shows that few lessons have been learned.
 
Though constructed in 2013, the first application for a cell tower at Lake was received ten years earlier.  But after the controversy over the Old Faithful cell tower received widespread media attention in 2004, Yellowstone’s Superintendent Suzanne Lewis placed a moratorium on future cell towers pending completion of a Park plan that would establish policies and standards for the placement of such facilities. 
 
The Park’s 2004 moratorium put a stop to consideration of the Lake cell tower proposal for six years.  In January 2010, with cellular coverage for the Lake developed area approved in the Park’s Wireless Plan, Verizon submitted its next application for a Lake cell tower.  This one was shelved until greater bandwidth could be provided to the Park (in the form of a new fiber optic cable from Livingston to Gardiner, Montana). 
 
In January 2012, Verizon re-submitted the 2010 application and this is the application that Park officials eventually approved. This approval, however, came despite the cell tower’s –