In a city where it is almost impossible to demolish a rundown, dilapidated structure filled with rotting wood and broken glass, it’s pretty surprising there’s little that can be done about a new eyesore — an updated 5G communications tower that we call the Toilet Roll Pole.
The TRP went up in recent weeks, surprising many who live and work along Line Street and causing some head-shaking by city officials. The new tower modified an earlier monopole that seemed hidden in plain sight for years, jammed next to a billboard.
Modifying towers with grotesque tower tops, as in downtown Charleston along the Septima P. Clark Parkway, is allowed in a 2016 regulation by the Federal Communications Commission.
“Under federal and state regulations, the city is strictly prohibited from imposing design standards on so-called ‘transmission towers’ such as this one,” city spokesman Jack O’Toole said — a sentiment confirmed by Angelina Panettieri, a legislative director with the National League of Cities.
“It’s a way for the telecom companies to get around dealing with the cities,” she told the Charleston City Paper. “The regulation has been rewritten by the FCC to allow a lot of changes and expansions under the guise of modifications and upgrades.”
What’s ironic is that the Telecommunications Act of 1996, a whopping revision of communications law to bring it into modern times, was shepherded into existence by the late U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings, D-S.C. The Charleston native would be rolling in his grave if he saw the TRP monstrosity just blocks from his grandparents’ home on Rutledge Avenue.
So what can you do about the new grossness on our skyline? Not much, other than complain to your member of Congress. Urge him or her to vote against the proposed American Broadband Deployment Act of 2023 (HR 3557), which seeks to turn the FCC’s current hideous regulation on tower modifications into law, which would make it harder to overturn.
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