West Gardiner voters at a special town meeting Saturday adopted a moratorium on communication, wind power and other towers in response to a plan to build a cell phone tower on Crams Point on Cobbossee Lake.

The 180-day moratorium will prevent the construction or use of towers not already permitted to give the town a chance to draft an ordinance with restrictions on future towers.

Gregory Couture, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, said the selectmen proposed the moratorium in response to concerns from residents near Crams Point, off Neck Road, about a plan to build a cellphone tower there. Black Diamond Consultants, a company with offices in Gardiner and Portsmouth, N.H., that does work in the nuclear, security and telecommunications sectors, got a work permit from the town in late July to build the tower, Couture said. He said he didn’t know anything about the plan, and a representative from the company didn’t return a call for comment.

Couture said the town will draft a new land use zoning ordinance for residents to vote on at the Town Meeting next year. He said the town will look at similar ordinances from other communities for guidance. The restrictions could include setback requirements and height restrictions, Couture said.

The moratorium won’t affect the town’s two current cellphone towers, he said.

The moratorium applies to new towers more than 40 feet tall that generate wind power or provide radio or television transmission, commercial mobile wireless services, unlicensed wireless services, cellular telephone services, specialized mobile radio communications, common carrier wireless exchange access services, personal communications service or pager services.

Paul Koenig — 621-5663

pkoenig@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @paul_koenig

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