A walk through the piney trails of the Ramapo Reservation isn’t just a walk, not for Peggy Bost. The sound of hiking boots hitting the hardened dirt takes her back to those winter walks with her husband, when they were both bundled up, walking side by side.
The bald eagle soaring overhead and the barred owl hooting are like little signs that he’s still with her. Of all the natural beauties of this place, being by the Ramapo River was his favorite part. He grew up on a stream in Tenafly.
When Bost, 61, and her late husband Kevin bought their Mahwah home in 2004, its proximity to the 4,000-acre reservation was the biggest selling point. “We have just so much wildlife,” she described. “There’s everything here.”
The tranquility she’s treasured all these years was at risk. That’s why Bost and other locals and activists joined a ragtag effort to fight a hulking 500-foot communication tower that was in talks to become by far the largest structure in the preserved parkland.
And it appears Bost and her friends have won.
Nine months ago, Bergen County entered into an agreement with a telecommunications company, McKay Brothers, to consider its proposal for a tower smack dab in the middle of the park. The structure — which would have been about half the size of the Eiffel Tower — would have brought improved cell phone signals, faster trade links for stock brokers, and a wad of cash to county budget coffers.
As of a meeting Wednesday night, county commissioners were still considering the proposal. Amid a probe by NJ Advance Media, they abruptly changed their tune Friday evening.
“After weighing the potential benefits against the regulatory complexity and the importance of preserving the character of this treasured reservation, the county has determined that it is not in the public interest to pursue this proposal further,” the commissioners said in an exclusive statement to NJ Advance Media.
“We appreciate the public’s engagement and passion for the Ramapo Mountains.”
The activists say it’s a win, a clobbering of what “would have been a desecration of one of the most beautiful places in New Jersey,” according to Jeff Tittel, a longtime conservationist and among those who spearheaded the fight against the tower. But county officials did not comment on a list of lingering questions, like whether the tower was truly needed to improve public safety at the reservation or if the tower could be proposed at another location.
McKay Brothers, a California-based company, did not respond to a request for comment on the county’s decision Friday.
The company and county officials had said public safety was a top reason to consider the proposal, citing spotty cell service in the large swaths of wilderness at the park, and increased visitorship, though it could not provide specific numbers because the reservation is free to enter. Local cops, though, disputed the claim, saying cell service near the Ramapos isn’t an issue anymore, thanks to a recently constructed cell tower at a Boy Scout camp nearby.
Another reason to consider it? Green, though not the kind that grows on trees. Bergen County stood to make up to $2 million from the tower, money it says it sorely needs as it continues to rebalance the books over looming federal funding cuts.
“We have a federal government that is gutting funding to so many of our critical resources and our programs that affect those most in need,” Democrat Tracy Silna Zur, Bergen County’s commissioner vice chairwoman, said at a meeting last fall.
“It’s not like we can just pull other dollars out of our derriere and fund projects of a magnitude to protect public safety.”
By Friday, she felt differently.
Zur said after doing due diligence, she was “personally opposed to this project.”
Can you hear me now?
Sure, there are a few other structures within the Ramapo Reservation’s 4,000 acres — some small historic homes, a search and rescue headquarters in a former police station and a handful of other cell towers that are about 100 to 200 feet high that are near it. Nothing even close to 500 feet tall, the mayor in Mahwah, where the reservation is located, said.
The vast majority of the reservation, though, is untouched forest, and when hikers, joggers, fishers and others go there to bask in nature get lost, they need their cell phones to work.
A “lack of reliable cell service is one of the biggest public safety challenges we face” in the reservation, Bergen County’s administrator Tom Duch said in the fall during a meeting.
And while county officials couldn’t say whether a lack of cell service had ever contributed to a major incident at the reservation, calls for help to the park are certainly on the rise.
The park reservation saw an explosion of incidents and calls for service six years ago, records made available via an Open Public Records Act request showed. In 2020, the park had 77 incidents and calls for service. One year later, it had over 400.
In the years since, calls and incidents have hovered around 200, with 12 so far this year, police records showed.
The exact reason for the uptick is unclear.
In its agreement with the county to consider the communication tower, McKay Brothers said there were “significant communications gaps in the park” that their structure would help address. County officials concurred with the assessment — cell coverage in the reservation could be better.
But Mahwah’s police chief disagreed. Though previous communication issues existed at the reservation, last year’s installation of an 88-foot communication tower nearby took care of the problems.
“As far as this office is concerned, (the smaller tower) ends the conversation regarding local coverage gaps,” the town’s police chief, Timothy O’Hara, said.
The town’s mayor concurred.
First responders have “absolutely 100% no issue with radio communications” at the reservation, Mahwah Mayor Jim Wysocki said.
Two major carriers in the area confirmed that emergency text services on phones use GPS not cell coverage to reach first responders.
Had county commissioners green-lit the project, it would have required several other approvals before actually coming to fruition, including nods from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the State House Commission and the New Jersey Highlands Council, because the park lies in the preservation area.
Spotty cell service or not, activists said all those extra layers of approvals are there for a reason — to make sure the land stays as undisturbed as possible.
This tower would have set a precedent, Elliott Ruga, of the New Jersey Highlands Coalition, argued.
“If you can build a communications tower here — despite the Green Acres diversion process and it being in Highlands preservation area, which is the most constrained, development, constrained designation in the state,” Ruga said, “you can build a communications tower anywhere.”
A small army
They showed up to county meetings. Even when the tower wasn’t on the agenda. Even though, as county officials stressed, it was only ever being entertained. Nothing was ever set in stone.
Still, they gathered, assembling a grassroots group of more than 40 members called “Saving Our Amazing Ramapos.” Not to mention the scores of residents advocating as private citizens.
And they were mad.
“We’re alarmed that you’re even considering listening to the proposal,” Ellie Gruber, of Ridgewood, said at an Oct. 15 meeting. She was one of a group who stepped up to the mic at the Bergen County Commissioners meeting that night.
One resident raised concerns about the risk to the flyway the reservation served for migratory birds — like the red knot — that travel through this eastern corridor.
Another speaker pointed out that most families just had two days’ notice about the tower project being discussed. She expected even more people would have spoken out at the meeting with more time to plan.
“We will fight them tooth and nail in court if we have to,” Emile DeVito, a wildlife biologist with the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, told NJ Advance Media before the county announced it would not pursue a deal with McKay Brothers.
The activist group was up against some big promises from McKay – money for the county, and for Wall Street.
The project — what McKay Brothers called a “multi‑tenant communications tower” — on Bear Swamp Road would have brought with it a ten-year lease that cell carriers (Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile) could link to if they chose, according to tower proposal documents.
The McKay Brothers’ lease was valued at $13 million over ten years — if companies had decided to connect to the tower — with $2.5 million guaranteed to Bergen County ($250,000 a year) in that time as part of the not-yet-finalized agreement, the company’s planning outline showed.
The plan for the tower also noted its proposed location in the reservation and its height would allow it to easily connect the stock markets in New York and Chicago. Besides citing the public safety improvements, McKay Brothers called that specific connection “in the public interest.”
None of that fazed the activists, Tittel said.
“Why should our parkland be sacrificed so hedge funds can make faster bets?”
On Friday, he was relieved that the financial pressures didn’t push the project through.
“I’m glad that the county is coming to their senses,” he said.
For Bost, the news was a cautious sigh of relief. She felt an obligation to fight for the land that she and her late husband loved so much. She’ll continue to do so.
“These mountains are pristine,” she told NJ Advance Media on a walk through the park earlier this winter. “When you look from afar and you see the view, it was kept that way for a reason.”
