RENSSELAERVILLE — The last possible impediment to the placement of a controversial public safety emergency-communications tower in this town’s  rural landscape is now removed.

On Friday, Jeannette Rice, a leader of Scenic Rensselaerville, called Craig Apple, the Albany County Sheriff, to tell him that the citizens group has decided not to appeal a recent decision in Albany County State Supreme Court that rejected the group’s petition to invalidate the town planning board’s  decision to greenlight the tower.

The tower is one of three new towers either built or, now, about to be built in south and southwestern Albany County.  The sheriff has maintained that the towers are needed to both remove local dead zones — a long-standing problem in the Hilltowns — and to complete a countywide ring of towers to supply high-quality reliable interoperable communication to law- enforcement agencies and other public entities throughout the county.

Existing towers in the rest of the county — the “Metro” portion of the digital “trunked” 800 Mhz radio communication system which costs $19.3 million — have already been upgraded to higher standards of performance and reliability. A new tower in Coeymans is up and operating.  And now the last pieces of the plan are about to be put in place in Berne and Rensselaerville.

In addition to radio transmitters, the tower will support microwave antennas to enable transmission from tower to tower. Ability to “see” neighboring towers in the system was one factor, the county says, in determining the necessary locations of the new towers.

On Wednesday, the sheriff told The Enterprise that steel was delivered to Berne this week  to erect the tower on U’Hai Mountain overlooking the hamlet, and that the tower should be completed in 10 to 14 days. “Then we plan on moving right to Rensselaerville,” he said.

A letter sent to Scenic Rensselaerville “friends and supporters” and signed by Rice, Joyce Schuld, Hans Soderquist, and Susan Story, expressed surprise and disappointment at the decision by Judge Gerald Connolly.

“Given the judge’s earlier earlier statements and his recognition that the case had ‘standing” due to the injuries the tower would cause to local artists, this was a surprise and disappointment,” the letter asserted.

Local artists had rallied against the placement of the tower in an inspiring landscape that had been designated by the town itself as a viewshed worthy of preservation.

The letter states that the group has been advised by its attorneys — Rodenhausen Chale in Rhinebeck — that “though this is a stunning determination, it would be difficult to challenge in an appeal.”

Another source of disappointment, the letter says, was the group’s failure to “get cooperation from town representatives to site the tower  in a location outside of the mapped, supposedly protected scenic viewshed….”

The letter concludes  on a note of gratitude “that over 170 citizens came on board in support of a just action to have improved communications throughout the town while protecting our rare scenic vistas.”

The new tower will be 180-feet high and  constructed of steel in a latticed configuration. Its appearance will be identical to the Berne and Coeymans towers. Radio communication equipment and microwave antennas —and perhaps cellular antennas at some future date — will be mounted on the tower.

It’s location northeast of the hamlet of Preston Hollow is in an area with few man-made structures —all of them low to the ground — and fields and woodlands. The setting is undeniably beautiful and is capped off by long views toward the mountains to the south.