The Kidder Township Zoning Board has approved a conditional use to increase the height of an AT& T Mobility cell tower.

The tower is located at 62 Red Maple Road, Lake Harmony, in a development just east of Harmony Beverage on Route 940.The tower is owned by American Tower Corporation and leased to AT&T along with a number of other companies, including T-Mobile."Municipalities encourage what is known as co-location," Debra Shulski, attorney for the applicant explained to the Kidder zoning hearing board."By allowing co-location under a master lease agreement, companies can utilize the same tower. This keeps everybody from building their own tower."The tower will be increased from 120 to 180 feet. The plan is to take the existing antennas and relocate them to 176 feet.AT&T needed relief in two areas in order to make the proposed change.First the tower is a nonconforming use under the Kidder Township Zoning Ordinance. Any change to the tower would require a similar approval.Secondly, the ordinance requires a setback of 125 percent of the tower.The existing tower which was approved in 1998 was granted a special exception and does not meet this requirement. The new design would not meet this requirement either.There is a structure within the existing set back.The board initially had some concerns about the home's location relative to the tower.Township Zoning Officer Ginny Compton testified that owners of the lot containing the home and the lot containing the tower are the same people and that they were notified of the hearing.Another concern expressed by board secretary, William Behret was if the existing foundation was adequate to handle the addition to the tower.Jeffrey Nagorney, a professional engineer with AdvantageEngineers, testified to the integrity of the design of monopole towers."I won't say towers never collapse," said Nagorney. "But they are designed to last. The new portion of the tower, even if it were to fail, it would not fall out, but is designed to collapse into itself."According to Annette Berke, a consultant for AT&T, if there are no appeals to the board's decision the new section of tower should be constructed sometime in May and hopefully online and operational by June.Joe Ruiz, an engineer with AT&T said that the additional height will improve AT&T's reliability in the area.