There will be a skyscraper of sorts living in the City of Hazelwood very soon. The St. Louis County Emergency Communications Network (ECN) has selected Hazelwood as one of 25 areas to get a new 190-foot emergency communications tower.

History Behind the Towers

Hazelwood Fire Chief Dave Radel said city staff has been in communication with the ECN director David Barney, in order to ascertain the necessity of installation and to come up with an agreement to the least obstructive location as possible. This would be a location that still reaches the ECN's operational mission.

The tower is the result of Proposition E-911, which was passed in November 2009. The $100 million bond issue will replace individual police, fire and EMS communications systems, uniting them under one system Radel said.

"As a result of the federal mandate to convert all radio frequencies from VHF to an 800 MHz broadband system, a complete change out of all radio equipment is underway; all police department and all fire departments," Radel said. "The origins of this mandate started with the communications failures during the September 11 attacks."

What It All Means

All portable radios, walkie talkies, chargers and batteries will be changed over in a 1:1 ratio swap. All affected departments have provided ECC with complete inventory of existing equipment. In addition to the radio equipment, the new system requires 25 specifically located new radio towers of differing heights throughout St. Louis County, of which the Hazelwood tower will be a part. Radel said varying locations were researched to no avail.

"Alternate locations are severely limited due to the operational considerations of the communications system," he said. "The federal mandate makes it a necessity and we have to have this tower.

"It will be installed in this corridor and now it's our responsibility to find an area of least negative impact."

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How will the tower look?

Hazelwood is proposing using a location ECN originally identified as "optimally operational" with a setback (not being directly located on the street) to address the aesthetics and safety. That would be near Hazelwood's maintenance facility located right before entering Harry S. Truman Park behind the former Beldt's Aquarium.

"Our ordinance requires there to be a fall zone of 60 percent of the height of the Tower, but it has been decided the fall zone would be the full length of the tower," Radel said. "We always like to adopt the worst case scenario.

"In the highly unlikely event that this tower would collapse, we want to make sure no structures are impacted."

Towers Pros

In spite of the challenges presented by the situation, Radel said there are positive aspects that should be mentioned.

"As a result of the new system interoperability between emergency agencies will be vastly improved," he said. "We will be linked in with St. Charles and Jefferson Counties."

Another pro is money: Hundreds of thousands of dollars will go to municipalities for equipment and years maintenance expenses of which the Proposition E-911 tax will pay.

Another pro: signal strength.

"The location of the new tower in Hazelwood will produce a signal strength much more powerful that the one we operate under now," Radel said. "What we call building penetration will end.

"There are several buildings inside Hazelwood where the interior fire attack crew cannot communicate with the command system outside of the building and this system would solve that."

City Support

Hazelwood Mayor Matthew Robinson said city officials support the measure.

"We realize the very real necessity of this tower but they draw a lot of fire," he said. "We've needed to upgrade for some time and I guess we need to take the bite on this.

"No one wants to see a tower from their back yard."

The location surrounding the tower will be a fenced in area 60x60 feet. Because the towers are line-of-site, which at its most simple definition means the tower's transmission are electro-magnetic radiation traveling in a straight line, they have to be point-to-point with each other in height to communicate.

Finalization and Public Hearing

Hazelwood city attorney Kevin O'Keefe is working through a lease price for the land and final terms of the agreement with the county.

St. Louis County and Barney have committed to holding a public hearing at a later date to get public opinion on the matter before ground breaks on tower installation.

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