County negotiates for Lamont tower site

The county next week will finalize the purchase on an acre of land outside Lamont, a site that houses a crucial radio tower in the county’s emergency communication network.

“In open session, the commissioners will sign the deed for a radio site,” said Steve Krigbaum, communications system manager for the county.

The site now holds a single, aging radio tower which the county is looking to improve to make it usable in the new, county-wide emergency radio system. The system is now used by 911 Whitcom dispatchers to communicate with police, fire and other emergency responders around the county.

Krigbaum said that radio site outside Lamont has been used by multiple counties for several years, but there was no official paperwork outlining who owned it.

When the county moved to update their radio system, they needed to update that tower, he explained.

“It was a moving target because the property was being sold,” he added.

Krigbaum eventually negotiated for the purchase of an acre from the owner. Next week, the purchase will come before the commissioners to be approved.

Crews have been working for the past year to install radio towers around the county in a circuit that will, once finished, provide more stable service than the aging system already in place.

While the new radio system is still about 10 years away from full completion, most major changes for the project, like installing the towers, will be completed in the next two years.

The county’s aging fiber optic system has encountered more and more glitches over the years. The chances of the system failing at some point in the county are one in every five years, versus one in every 25 years for the radio transmission system.

County officials plan to keep the current fiber optic cable system and use it as a backup.

The funding for the new system came out of the county’s one tenth of one percent sales tax, and other parts came from Fire District 11.

The system works by sending signals between microwave radios set up on a circuit around the county.