Old Faithful Timeline
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| I Can Both See and Hear You Now |
May 1995: Cellular One requests permission to place antennas on the existing communications tower at Old Faithful (located in the parking lot across from the entrance to the Snow Lodge). Cellular One notes that it would rather construct a free-standing tower for its antennas near the water-treatment facility.
Superintendent Finley expresses concern about the visibility of the structure in the parking lot, and eventually agrees to a proposal for a free-standing cell tower (though not one near the water-treatment facility).
May 1996: Cellular One is granted permission to place antennas on the existing communications tower in the parking lot across from the entrance to the Snow Lodge.
December 1, 1997: The Director of the Park Service issues an order (#53A) laying out the agency’s procedures for handling applications for cell towers on Park Service land. It provides that after receiving a completed application, “the Superintendent will insure that the public is notified and given the opportunity to comment” by publishing a notice in the Federal Register and also in a local newspaper. [This Director’s Order would be rescinded and replaced in April 2000, but was in effect for all of 1998 and 1999 and the first quarter of 2000.]
1998: Western Wireless submits an application to Yellowstone to build two cell towers: one at Old Faithful and another at Grant Village. (The history of the Grant Village cell tower is omitted from this timeline.)
At some point, Park officials prepare a Federal Register notice for the proposed cell tower at Old Faithful, but it is never published.
August 17, 1999: Yellowstone issues a press release notifying the public that the Environmental Assessment (EA) for the Old Faithful cell tower is available. The EA describes the proposed Old Faithful cell tower as follows:
“The tower may not extend more than 10 feet above the tops of the surrounding forest vegetation… At the Old Faithful site, the monopole would be camouflaged to appear at a distance to look like one of the burned lodgepole pine trees adjacent to the proposed site.”
August 24, 1999: Yellowstone receives its only public comment on the proposed Old Faithful cell tower, and it opposes the tower. Yellowstone officials conclude that this single comment constitutes adequate public involvement.
August 31, 1999: The Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office concludes, based solely on the description in the EA, that the cell tower at Old Faithful will not have an “adverse effect” on the Old Faithful Historic District.
November 1999: Yellowstone issues a “Finding of No Significant Impact” [FONSI] for the Old Faithful cell tower. The FONSI’s description of the proposed Old Faithful cell tower is similar to the EA’s:
“The cell site would consist of a monopole tower extending not more than 10 feet above the existing treetops.
November 1999: NPS signs the Right-of-Way (ROW) for the Old Faithful cell tower. The ROW provides that “… a 70-foot antenna tower will be installed… at this location.”
May 26, 2000: Marv Jensen, Assistant Superintendent at Yellowstone, unilaterally amends the 1999 Right-of-Way to allow for a taller tower at Old Faithful. Instead of a 70-foot tower, Jensen’s “amendment” (simply an entry in the Administrative Record kept at Yellowstone) allows for a 100-foot tower.
Summer 2001: The cell tower is constructed at Old Faithful.
August 2001: Almost immediately Park Service rangers criticize the cell tower, and in response a “big [horizontal] platform” is removed to reduce the tower’s visibility. The tower’s height, however, remains the same.
November 2002: Yellowstone formalizes the Marv Jensen amendment to the 1999 Right-of-Way to allow for a 100-foot Old Faithful cell tower, now that it has been built to that height.
January 2004: Wyoming’s historic preservation agency agrees with PEER’s assessment, and writes to Superintendent Lewis that the Old Faithful cell tower now has an “adverse effect” on the Old Faithful Historic District.
March 2004: PEER issues a press release calling the Old Faithful cell tower an eyesore and asserting that the tower is illegal because the Park Service approved it without proper notice and contrary to Congressional intent.
March 2004: Editorials appear in various newspapers opposing the Old Faithful cell tower.
Idaho Mountain Express: “Old Faithful cell tower is unfaithful blight”(March 19, 2004)
The Providence Journal: “Wireless national parks” (April 19, 2004)
The Tampa Tribune: “Invasion Of The Cell Towers” (April 19, 2004)
The Idaho Statesman: “Cell-phone towers belong outside our national parks” (September 27, 2004)
June 2004: The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) writes to Yellowstone Superintendent Suzanne Lewis, seeking information on how Park officials plan to “eliminate the adverse visual effect of the [Old Faithful cell] tower.”
July 8, 2004: Yellowstone places a moratorium on new telecommunications facilities “until such time as a thorough planning process has been done and a plan is completed.”
January 2005: Yellowstone officials decide to remove the top 20-foot section of the Old Faithful cell tower “[d]ue to negative visual impacts and comments from the public,…”
June 9, 2005: PEER receives a computerized simulation of what the Old Faithful cell tower will look like after it is shortened by 20 feet, and issues a press release rejecting the makeover as “a bust.”
June 13, 2005: Western Wireless removes the top 20 feet of the Old Faithful cell tower.
May 2006: Another editorial criticizes the Old Faithful cell tower.
Hartford Courant: “National Parks and Cell Towers”(May 14, 2006)
September 2008: Yellowstone produces a “Wireless Plan” Environmental Assessment (EA) for public review. The EA [p. 28] calls for the Old Faithful cell tower to be relocated “to an area near the Old Faithful water treatment plan when it becomes feasible to reduce the overall visibility of the tower.” The Park notes that this “relocation could result in a slight decrease in service near the Old Faithful developed area along a few miles of the Grand Loop Road.”
April 2009: Yellowstone issues a “Finding of No Significant Impact” [FONSI] for the Wireless Plan. Page 4 repeats the language of the Plan: “The Old Faithful cell tower will be relocated to an area near the Old Faithful water treatment plant when it becomes feasible, to reduce the overall visibility of the tower.”
September 2009: Yellowstone officials issue a one-year renewal of the Right-of-Way for the Old Faithful cell tower. The short-term extension is intended to allow time for the Park Service “to perform additional siting and engineering work at the fresh water treatment site…, the relocation site proposed in the EA and FONSI.” The EA includes two photo pull-outs that indicate that a tower at the fresh water treatment site would be less visible than the current tower. [Ironically, this fresh water treatment site is the same one proposed in 1995 by Cellular One, but rejected by the Park.]
The Park Service conducts new tests in 2009 involving weather balloons, and now finds that a tower at the water treatment site might be “more visible to the public than the current location…” An alternative site proposed by the WWC Holding Company, Inc. is found to have the “potential to adversely affect wetlands and… would be very noticeable from the Grand Loop Road.”
October 2010: Yellowstone officials issue a ten-year renewal of the Right-of-Way for the Old Faithful cell tower. The last paragraph (#23) awkwardly states that a “request for migration” of the Old Faithful cell tower “is to be expected during the timeframe of this right-of-way.”
The Park Service insists that it will “continue to consider and evaluate alternative sites in the Old Faithful area as they are identified,” but it appears that little if anything is being done to actively identify other alternatives.