After months of debate and consideration, the St. Croix Coastal Zone Management Committee decided to reject an application to construct a 150-foot tall communications tower in Estate Long Point and Cotton Garden sought by the Virgin Islands Government and Liberty Mobile as part of AT&T’s first responder network, or FirstNet.
The matter was discussed during a public hearing in February, during which residents and landowners voiced concerns about property devaluation, noise and potential environmental impacts. Those concerns and others were shared again during a CZM decision meeting in March, and committee members ultimately tabled a vote on the matter in order to gather more community input.
After brief remarks from attorney Kevin Rames, who is representing the applicants, and Wanda Perez, Liberty USVI’s senior manager for government affairs, commissioners shared that they still had misgivings about the development. Commissioner Aubrey Ruan said he had “a bad feeling in my stomach over this whole issue,” and commissioner May Cornwall said she hadn’t seen enough evidence to suggest that the Estate Long Point and Cotton Garden property was the only viable site for the tower.
Commissioners also questioned whether the applicants considered switching to an alternative site in Grapetree Bay, leading to several minutes of heated back-and-forth.
“We don’t want to be argumentative at all,” Rames said, “but… you simply cannot say that what has happened here is that we have rejected a suitable site in exchange for a site that we have invested in. The Grapetree Bay site — you may look at and think, from your own perspective, that it’s satisfactory, but it has been deemed outside of the appropriate zone and incapable of meeting the requirements of FirstNet.”
After voting to reject the application, commissioner Kai Nielsen acknowledged the importance of the project but said it was commissioners’ feeling that the assessments “weren’t sufficient to put it in its current location.”
“There are several other properties with property owners willing and able to provide land that we are to believe could fit the requirements once they are provided to us,” he said.
The committee then heard a presentation from the St. Croix Renaissance Group, which is seeking to build a reverse osmosis water production unit at St. Croix’s south shore industrial complex.
