Lawmaker Stops Air Force Plan for Antennas on Scenic Ridge

U.S. Rep. Silvio O. Conte said Friday that he has rounded up enough votes in the House Appropriations Committee to scuttle the Air Force’s plans to erect at least 30 communications antennas on a ridge in the Berkshire Hills.

“It’s dead,” Conte said after a speech Friday to several hundred cheering residents gathered on the proposed site. The Pittsfield Republican is the ranking minority member of the committee.

“The Air Force hasn’t come out openly and said they are not going to build it, but they need the money to do it and they are not getting that.”

He said he did not anticipate the matter would even go as far as a committee vote.

“When a guy who has been on the committee for 27 years says he doesn’t want something, it doesn’t get done,” Conte said.

An aide to James M. O’Brien, a spokesman for Air Force Secretary Verne Orr, said O’Brien was out of the office and could not be reached.

The Air Force has said it wanted to build the towers, ranging in height from 100 to 300 feet, as part of a $22.7-million Northeast Regional Communications Center to serve its installations and other federal agencies in New England and New York.

The towers were to be located on 600 acres in Hawley and Ashfield, with the receivers and communications center to be placed on Air Force property on or near Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee.