by Neil Ruud
The current KDVS radio tower on Kerr Hall causes telecommunication interference and is not tall enough to legally protect KDVS’ signal beyond the immediate area. In 1996, KDVS’s staff started researching potential sites to build a taller tower and legally protect its listeners in Yolo County and beyond.
Results Radio, a company with a technical need to locate a tower near Davis, approached KDVS in 2009 with an opportunity to co-locate on their proposed tower. After an environmental impact report found that the tower would have little impact, a one-year Use permit was issued for the construction of the tower.
A year later, Results Radio filed for a construction extension before the previous permit expired. The extension was necessary because of the time intensive FCC construction permit approval process. The extension was approved. Subsequently, the extension was appealed by a Davis resident who claimed that changes were made to the original project. County staff wrote a report categorically rejecting the all of appellant’s claims and the Yolo County Planning Commission voted unanimously to deny the appeal. The appeal is now headed to the Board of Supervisors who must determine if there has been a significant change in the project.
Opponents of the tower also claim that it will impact migratory birds in the Pacific flyway and significantly detract from local aesthetics. They claim that KDVS should search for another location for a tower to avoid these impacts.
The Pacific flyway is 300 miles wide; almost every tower in California is in the Pacific flyway. Additionally, this tower is not inconsistent with the use of the space; there is a taller tower closer to Davis. The proposed tower will have state-of-the-art technology recommended by US Fish and Wildlife guidelines to protect migratory birds. The only changes made to the project were to mitigate environmental concerns and were made prior to the initial, unanimous approval of the tower. These issues were addressed in the original certified environmental document which the public had an opportunity to comment on.
If this tower is not built, there will be an immediate negative impact on KDVS’s coverage. Even more importantly, KDVS’s prospects of relocation will be even more limited than they already are. The Davis City Council’s offers of assistance finding alternate sites were appreciated, but KDVS has already exhausted other options in the extremely technical field of tower location which is constrained by the FCC, the FAA, and local government.
On Tuesday, December 13th at 9am, The Yolo County Board of Supervisors will hear the appeal against extending KDVS’s permit to build a new tower at the Yolo County Central Landfill. KDVS is aggressively seeking the denial of this appeal for the benefit of the citizens, non-profits, and businesses of Yolo County. These groups benefit from local news coverage, free public service announcements and low-cost underwriting messages.
For more information on the KDVS tower project or to learn how you can help protect KDVS, please visit kdvs.org/tower
Neil Ruud is the general manager at KDVS
I second this.
This article doesn’t address the higher intensity white strobe lights of the new tower and how that will effect the northeast Davis neighbors and the flashing on the night sky.
rusty, the answer to your point is “Not at all”
First, the lights are not “higher intensity.” Only towers that are taller than 500 feet require the higher intensity lights.
Second, the new generation of LED strobe lights are specifically designed to direct light upward toward any airplane they are warning, but not lower than the horizontal elevation of the lights.
As Dialight, the company that has developed the LED strobe lights, says in their website, [i]”[b]Minimized Ground Scatter[/b]
[b]Sharp Beam Cutoff To Prevent Light Pollution[/b]
In lighting, it has always been a challenge to direct light where it is needed and cutoff light where it is not wanted. Over the years, flashing beacon lights that direct light downward into residential areas have caused numerous complaints and legal battles. This light pollution is caused primarily by limitations of the optical designs. Dialight has overcome this problem with a patented reflector based optics system designed specifically for the obstruction signals application. Dialight’s optics technology creates the sharpest beam cutoff in the industry by directing almost no light downward.. The controlled beam pattern results in essentially zero light pollution. The chart below shows the light pollution (amount of light seen) at various distances for several 2,000 candela red beacons mounted on a 150-foot tower. The Dialight beacon maintains extremely low light levels to the ground while ensuring that aircraft see the required 2,000 candelas.”[/i]
rusty, here is a link to a Dialight documentation page that includes their comment above as well as several graphics and pictures that document how and why Ground Sacatter of light is minimized.
rusty, here are links to Dialight documentation that includes their comment above as well as several graphics and pictures that document how and why Ground Sacatter of light is minimized.
[url]https://www.google.com/search?q=”minimized+ground+scatter”&hl=en&num=10&lr=&ft=i&cr=&safe=images[/url]
[url]http://html.alldatasheet.com/h…001EU.html[/url]
Don, third time is a charm. Can you please delete the two typo posts of mine above . . . as well as this one.
Neil: You are allowing KDVS to be used as a pawn to drive the commercial interests of Results Radio.
It’s called a give-to-get.
I reflects badly on the radio station.
I don’t think that’s a fair indictment Anon. KDVS has a legitimate interest in a radio transmitter, I fail to see how that legitimate interest means they are being used as a pawn. I think reasonable can disagree on the radio tower itself without going there.
I think that this is a fairly clear issue of folks with different interests simply advocating for those interests.
KDVS certainly has the right to advocate for itself and it’s listeners.
Results radio has the right to promote actions that favor it’s interest.
Folks who do not like the proximity to or perceived impact of a tower near their property have the right to protest without being labelled NIMBYs
or other favored perjoratives of the day.
And folks who are interested in protecting the bird populations have a right to forward that point of view.
I do not believe that any one has a moral high ground here ( except perhaps the birds). This is purely a matter of perceived personal best interests and should be treated as such.
And to Neil Rudd I would point out that stating that there are many other bird hazards already in existence, is certainly no argument for constructing another.
Much ado about nothing . After the tower is in place, everyone will forget about it except when viewing it in daylight, at a distance or overflying it by night. KDVS is one of Davis’ cultural marquees !
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068909/quotes?qt=qt0482379
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068909/quotes?qt=qt0482379
As I asked before, what are the benefits to Davis for this tower? I now have an answer – radio reception for a local Davis station. So what we have here is a situation where we are weighing the best interests of radio reception for customers versus the possible danger to birds in a 300 mile wide flyway. Considering how much of a mess the numerous birds make at University Mall, I personally would choose radio reception as the more important consideration. I doubt one radio tower is going to make that much difference in a 300 mile wide flyway, and the danger is speculative at best. Just my view…
[quote]I think that this is a fairly clear issue of folks with different interests simply advocating for those interests.
KDVS certainly has the right to advocate for itself and it’s listeners.
Results radio has the right to promote actions that favor it’s interest.
Folks who do not like the proximity to or perceived impact of a tower near their property have the right to protest without being labelled NIMBYs
or other favored perjoratives of the day.
And folks who are interested in protecting the bird populations have a right to forward that point of view.
I do not believe that any one has a moral high ground here ( except perhaps the birds). This is purely a matter of perceived personal best interests and should be treated as such. [/quote]
Well said…
The landfill lies in the heart of the Pacific Flyway and millions of birds traverse this specific area to reach the many near-by wetlands including the City of Davis wetlands, Willow Slough wetlands and the Yolo by pass and Wild Life Area. Millions of dollars of public and private money have been spent to establish thousands of acres of seasonal wetlands In the Bypass and to establish land management practices to maintain the wetland habitats which provide foraging, nesting and breeding habitat for thousands of birds annually. We have spent millions of dollars on the wetland habitats to attract birds and other wetland species to these areas, and now we propose to erect another tower in the flight path! The landfill itself and its immediate area provide foraging and nesting habitat for hundreds of birds as well.
It is indisputable that this tower in this location will be responsible for the death of hundreds of migratory and resident birds annually. The unfortunate fact that there is already another tower there is no argument for adding this one.
Several biologists have testified that the original environmental studies were inadequate and that an EIR?EIS should have been performed along with consultation with fish and wildlife regarding impacts on threatened and endangered species that would migrate through this area.
The tower will also have a large impact on neighbors of the site and on night time skies. The three white flashing strobes will be visible for miles and will impact both people and wildlife. (Refer to the example that was posted on this site in a previous blog.)
If KDVS has been having problems for years, why haven’t they applied to co-locate at the many other towers already existing in Yolo and/or Sacramento County?
I sincerely hope that the BOS will deny the permit extension. This tower should never have been considered for this site.
We all value KDVS.
The City Council members noted how much they loved the station, how they grew up listening to the station, what an asset is was to the community.
But they still recognized what a horrible project the Results Radio tower would be and voted unanimously to oppose the proposal.
Steve offered to try and help them locate to a city owned tower and Sue was very disappointed that they hadn’t engaged the City Council for help in solving their location problem.
The question mark between EIR and EIS in the previous post is a typo. Should be an slash.
“what are the benefits to Davis for this tower?”
Elaine: KDVS gets to relocate to the tower. The county gets $18,000 per year income.
Davis gets:
(1) Three bright white strobes on the edge of town … 24/7/365 at 40 flashes per minute.
(2) More pissed-off neighboring farmers that feel like they gotten throw under the bus again.
(3) Dead birds that we attracted to the area with the Davis Wetlands project.
(4) The risk of an antenna farm at the landfill.
(5) Major damage to the Pass-Through Agreement as a consequence of RDA staff (Hess) establishing the precedent that the letter of the agreement is subordinate to the interpretation of the “spirit” of the agreement by staff and whatever council majority is sitting at the time.
(6) A violation of the Greenline MOU between Davis, Woodland, and the County.
(7) The precedent that open space preservation under the Pass-Through Agreement and the Greenline MOU is limited to farming operations – forget agricultural vistas, sight lines, dark skies, etc.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
Matt,
Pretty cool improvements to tower lighting. How is it that you happen to know that the Dialight brand product is the one specified for this proposed tower?
Nobody has yet explained why Results Radio and KDVS can not broadcast from the existing 500 ft tower located about a quarter mile from the site of the proposed tower.
Tomorrow at 9:00 A.M is the hearing on the appeal and suddenly, on the day before the meeting, we are told that the local not for profit low power station stands to benefit from allowing this new tower to be erected. What’s with that? This is the first I’ve heard anything about KDVS. Up until now, everything I’ve read on the Vanguard has referred to some radio company I’ve never heard of with a station I have never tuned into. Maybe I need to renew my subscription to the Emptyprise.
“The extension was necessary because of the time intensive FCC construction permit approval process.”
Wrong. The extension was necessary because Results Radio was engaged in a complex scheme to bypass FCC interference regulations that initially led to the FCC denying their application for the landfill.
This involved exploiting a loophole in the interference regulations designed to accommodate operating stations with preexisting interference.
This involved staging a fake relocation to an existing Dunnigan Hills tower to get field data for their FCC reapplication to the landfill.
This involved setting up a transmitter at the Dunnigan Hills site without county permits, and then getting the missing authorizations after they were exposed.
The idea that they failed to perform under the one year option period because the wheels of bureaucracy in Washington turn slowly is false.
The FCC approval is under appeal.
The existing 500′ tower on Road 102 is full. It might not look crowded, but towers can only have so many antennas on them due to wind shear / interference / other technical issues.
Locating a tower is very challenging. There are minimum distances that KDVS has to keep from other 90.3 FM towers as well as 90.1 and 90.5 towers to avoid interference. Also, the low end of the dial has to take TV channel 6 into account, which adds to the challenge. So there simply aren’t other options to choose from. If KDVS doesn’t get a taller tower now, and protect its existing territory, then static will eventually become a lot more common than local programming on 90.3 FM.
County Staff did a very good job countering the issues raised in the appeal about impacts from the tower. See the following link for more info:
http://141.174.195.7/agenda_publish.cfm?mt=ALL&get_month=12&get_year=2011&dsp=agm&seq=455&rev=0&ag=20&ln=6447&nseq=461&nrev=0&pseq=&prev=#ReturnTo6447
roger, when one decides to be a NIMBY, as the residents along Mace and in Willowbank and El Macero did when the tower was originally proposed for a location within 100 yards of the Brooks Riding Academy on South Mace, I (and others) took the time to work with Yolo County to present to Results Radio a series of questions about impact. Results Radio provided the Dialight information to the County, as well as to meetings of the Willowbank Service Advsory Area Committee and the El Macero Homeowners Association.
Results Radio was very proud that they were doing everything that they could to minimize the impact of the tower on the neighbors. At that time the tower was a guy wired tower.
I answered your 500 foot tower question on 12/6 in another thread. Here is that answer again.
Matt Williams
12/06/11 – 11:05 PM
…
Excellent question roger. I asked the exact same question of CBS the owner of the 500 ft. tower over 2 years ago. The answer from CBS was that the “tower was full.” Visually, that didn’t make sense to me. There seemed to be plenty of open area on the tower to accept additional mounted equipment. Their answer to me was very enlightening. Bottom-line the “fullness” of the tower is determined by the cumulative amount of wind shear that the mounted equipment contributes. So despite the visual evidence to the untrained eye, the 500ft. CBS tower is “full.”
rusty: Matt’s analysis is false. And as far as I can tell, the CEQA analysis of the light impacts was primarily some printouts of web pages.
At 2.5 miles, the strobe lights will only be approximately 1 degree above horizontal. It will illuminate the ground before it hits Lake Alhambra, old East Davis, and Wildhorse. The bright light from these strobes, by design, travels dozens of miles to alert aircraft.
“when one decides to be a NIMBY”
Matt: You and your NIMBY associates also worked very hard to move the impacts to North Davis. The current opponents are clear that this tower should be banned from the Davis sphere-of-influence under the Pass-Through Agreement. Not dumped on some other neighborhood.
Actually, Matt provided some very good information.
Yes, the intention of the medium-intensity lights is to alert aircraft dozens of miles away. But it isn’t to illuminate the aircraft. This tower is far enough out of town that it will fade into the background for almost all East/North Davis residents.
This tower design, and the state-of-the-art lights will likely be studied by other communities hoping to minimize light pollution and wildlife impacts from their towers. Isn’t that the position that Davis strives for?
Again, why can’t this tower be further south, closer to Dixon? Is there interference there?
Anon said . . .
“Wrong. The extension was necessary because Results Radio was engaged in a complex scheme to bypass FCC interference regulations that initially led to the FCC denying their application for the landfill.
This involved exploiting a loophole in the interference regulations designed to accommodate operating stations with preexisting interference.
This involved staging a fake relocation to an existing Dunnigan Hills tower to get field data for their FCC reapplication to the landfill.
This involved setting up a transmitter at the Dunnigan Hills site without county permits, and then getting the missing authorizations after they were exposed.
The idea that they failed to perform under the one year option period because the wheels of bureaucracy in Washington turn slowly is false.
The FCC approval is under appeal.”
Anon, your statement above is only partially correct. First, there was no scheme, second there is no loophole, third the FCC process is complex by its very nature. If anyone reviews Results Radio’s application filed with the FCC after the Supervisors approved the landfill site in 2010, they will find that the application [u]always[/u] was openly founded on the FCC’s regulations regarding signal overlap.
What you are overlooking Anon is that the FCC had approved a building permit for Results Radio for the South Mace Boulevard site. It fully complied with all the FCC’s regulations, and was approved as a result. FCC regulations would have allowed Results Radio to build the tower at the South Mace site, broadcast for a single day, and than apply to move their tower to the landfill, and the FCC would have had no choice but to approve the move under its regulations. Results Radio’s 2010 application directly asked the FCC to approve a permit for the Landfill site without going through the actual construction of the South Mace tower and then tearing it down and moving it. The FCC came back to Results Radio saying that after much deliberation they wouldn’t do as Results Radio requested, but that there was a way to accomplish the same end result by using the existing Dunnigan tower. Thus it was the FCC that determined how best to apply its rules in this situation and advised Results Radio of its finding. Results radio then acted on what the FCC told it.
The appeal Eileen has filed with the FCC will be heard on its merits; however, those merits (demerits?) do not include the words scheme or bypass.
First of all, we don’t “all value KDVS”. Many of us think the station is embarrassingly amateurish, and that it only survives because it is subsidized by the fees of UC Davis students. Come to think of it, there’s a good potential source of fee cuts.
KDVS can already be heard all too clearly in Davis. They seem to be under a delusion that lots of people in Sacramento would tune in if only they could.
Finally, I am continually surprised by how quickly Davis leftists discard environmental concerns, whether it be about wildlife, as in this tower, or pollution, as in the well water? It seems that the environment is only essential when it comes combined a need for bigger government.
Anon said . . .
[i]”At 2.5 miles, the strobe lights will only be approximately 1 degree above horizontal. It will illuminate the ground before it hits Lake Alhambra, old East Davis, and Wildhorse. The bright light from these strobes, by design, travels dozens of miles to alert aircraft.”[/i]
Well said Anon, but like Paul Harvey you need to include “the rest of the story”
The rest of the story is that other than while landing and taking off at an airport, airplanes are always above 200 feet in altitude (the height of the lower strobes on the proposed tower), therefore all light directed at a flying plane will be directed UP. Can you describe even one instance where there is reason to direct light from the Landfill to a plane flying at an altitude less than 200 feet? You can’t.
Second, the US Patent Office has issued patents to Dialight for the unique design of its new generation LED lights for the way they use reflective optics to ensure that NO light is directed below horizontal. So in your example wher the tower is one degree [u]above[/u] horizontal from Lake Alhambra, old East Davis, and Wildhorse, that means that Lake Alhambra, old East Davis, and Wildhorse are one degree below horizontal from the lights on the tower. The light will fly at least 200 feet above those Davis locations and never hit the ground. If the Landfill is a higher elevation than Davis (as I expect it is) then the light will fly over Davis at an elevation even higher than 200 feet.
As Paul Harvey would say, “And now you have the rest of the story.”
J.R.:
On the subsidy issue, forcing unmitigated environmental impacts on wildlife, the farmers, and the residents of north and northeast Davis is a form of subsidy.
On the leftist hypocrisy issue, I assume you are speaking about the NIMBY’s on the proponent side. The environmental community has consistantly opposed the tower at both sites.