NEW SCOTLAND — Two applications for telecommunication towers are now being considered by the planning board.

Attorney Adam Walters from New Cingular Wireless has returned to the planning board this month after a 10 month hiatus. He is now working with a new site acquisition company, Velocitel, rather than Pyramid Network, but the proposal is the same as last year’s — to build a new 90-foot tower next to the village of Voorheesville’s water tank at the end of Woods Hill Road off of Swift Road.

Also, URS Corporation, representing Dominion Transmission, is still in the process of getting approval for an new telecommunications tower at the end of Tower Lane on the Helderberg escarpment. The plan is to tear down an existing 86-foot tower and put up a new 195-foot high tower. Representatives for this company first appeared before the board in December.

These two applications are the only ones that have come before the town since New Scotland’s Wireless Telecommunications Law went into effect in December of 2004.

Dominion Transmission, transmits micro-wave and radio waves to send data and coordinate the movement of oil in the area. Also co-located on this tower are some governmental agencies like the CIA, FBI, and State Police.

At Cingular's site, on Woods Hill Road, there is already an existing Sprint tower to the right of the village’s water tank, but it is currently full with antennas, and Cingular needs a spot just at or above the tree line to improve cell-phone service in the area, Walters said.

Planning board chairman Robert Stapf told Walters that the board has the same request lingering from last year. Other alternative locations still need to be investigated to see if the needs can be reasonably met elsewhere on existing structures such as nearby church steeples, he said.

Walters presented colored diagrams — one highlighting where there is lack of cell-phone coverage now and then a second color-coded map depicting how coverage will be improved based on this location.

Cingular doesn’t keep track of where its existing users live but rather builds plans to design where there is no coverage and tries to fill in the gaps, Walters said. This tower will particularly give Cingular cell-phone users reception along New Scotland Road in town and in the village of Voorheesville, Walters said.

The town’s legal counsel for the telecommunications law is Peter Barber. He said that, assuming there is a need for this new tower, the law requires that it be as least intrusive as possible. Planning board member Elizabeth Stewart asked Walters if it would be advantageous to go higher than 90 feet, so that there could be more co-locations in the future and also better coverage, reaching even farther.

Walters was intrigued and said that 90 feet is just the minimum height Cingular needs to be above the tree line. The tower already at this site is 90-feet.