The Wahkiakum County Eagle - Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891

Cathlamet's skyline changed last week with the installation of a new pole for law enforcement and emergency management radio and microwave communications.

The stainless steel pole stands 82 feet above the ground at Julius A. Wendt Elementary School. It replaces two wooden poles that supported a variety of antennas.

"When they said ‘pole,' I thought it would be like a wooden pole," said Sheriff Jon Deamore. "Instead it's this huge stainless steel pole."

The steel is approximately 3/8 of an inch thick. Another 20 feet of the pole is buried in the ground.

It supports two microwave transmitters, and in the adjacent shed, officials have installed an emergency generator, batteries for power outages, and a stack of new radio gear.

The addition of the generators to power the battery backup system is a big advance Dearmore said. The system is set so that in a power outage, the equipment switches to battery power, and within a minute, the generator, fueled by a propane tank buried in the ground, fires up to provide power.

"Now, we get a recorded announcement of the power outage broadcast into our radios; we even hear it in our cars," he said. "Before, we had to scramble to find a generator and get it set up."

The pole is part of an upgrade of local law enforcement and emergency response communications systems. The Federal Communications Commission has ordered all agencies are supposed to switch to narrow band frequencies by January, 2013. The switch will shift agencies into a smaller spectrum of radio waves and open other frequencies for growing cell phone and commercial uses.

A $500,000 grant from the US Department of Homeland Security is financing the overall project, with Wahkiakum County paying a 25 percent share. At the end of 2009, county commissioners appointed Cathlamet Fire Department Captain Beau Renfro to handle the project. The monopole installation and associated equipment upgrade cost $65,000.

"We're about a year ahead of schedule," Renfro said last Friday. "The monopole is the last major piece. We will have to reprogram all law enforcement and emergency response radios."

The project will expand from three to five the number of radio repeaters for the county agencies, and that should help cover the dead spots in certain valleys, Renfro and Dearmore said.

Equipment in the repeaters is being upgraded to handle the new frequencies, and they've added a generator at the KM Mountain site, which has been fortified to curtail vandalism and theft.

The monopole microwave transmitter is high enough to have a direct, line-of-site transmission to another microwave site on Clatskanie Peak, and that will enable law enforcement and emergency response officials to maintain communication in times of disasters, which since 1996, have twice cut all transportation, telephone and cell phone communication, except ham radio, from Cathlamet to outside areas.

In the end, the new radios will be compatible with systems in other counties; Renfro said the local departments will be able to communicate with agencies upriver through Skamania County.

The project also involves working with agencies in other counties, including Columbia and Clatsop counties in Oregon. The agencies are allowing each other to use space in their repeater stations so that they have a good network for their systems.

"The cooperation has been tremendous," Dearmore said.