The town of Cape Elizabeth won’t appeal a recent federal court decision that would allow Verizon Wireless to install antennas on an empty water tower in the Shore Acres subdivision.

The Town Council voted 6-0 Wednesday to accept the Sept. 30 decision of U.S. District Judge Jon Levy.

Verizon filed the lawsuit in July 2014 after the town rejected the company’s proposal to install three cellular antennas on the 80-foot-tall tank on Avon Road to improve cellular communications in the coastal community.

The Portland Water District drained the tank in 2007, when public water system improvements made it unnecessary. However, it still hosts an 18-foot-tall antenna that was installed in the 1980s to monitor the town’s sewage pumping and treatment system.

Ben McDougal, the town’s code enforcement officer, denied Verizon’s request for a building permit, citing a municipal zoning ordinance that requires cell antennas to be subordinate or accessory uses of an “alternative tower structure,” such as clock towers, bell steeples and water tanks.

McDougal determined that the tank doesn’t qualify as an “alternative tower structure” because its principal purpose now is to support the sewage treatment system’s antenna as an accessory use. While the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals upheld McDougal’s decision, Levy found that Verizon’s antennas qualify as an allowed accessory use of the tank’s principal use.

Verizon is expected to resubmit its application for the antennas and site improvements in the coming weeks, McDougal said Friday.

The 30-day appeal period for Levy’s decision runs through Oct. 30. Priscilla Armstrong, Pavel Darling and Brad Kauffman, residents who opposed Verizon’s proposal and filed as intervenors in the case, couldn’t be reached for comment.

 

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