A congregation of residents on the south side of Swift Current are concerned with SaskTel pondering the construction of a towering cell structure.

Richard St Jacques, along with a few others that live close to the proposed location (440 Central Avenue South), recently went door-to-door handing out around 400 letters informing the neighbourhood of SaskTel's idea.

Part of their issue lies within the public consultation process that SaskTel has carried out to this point. The Crown Corporation posted a public notice in the July 27th edition of the Southwest Booster and sent letters to residents within close proximity of the site.

However, St Jacques, who lives on Gibbs Street West right across from the former site of the Palliser Regional Care Centre, didn't receive any notice.

"There's a lot of senior's complexes that they feel that they weren't properly notified from what they've told me," he said.

"In terms of talking with SaskTel, they had told us that according to federal regulation, they're only required to indicate to people within three times the height of the tower [so about 447 feet]."

The other objection some of the south side residents have with the 149-foot-tall structure revolves around their health.

"We don't know if there's been enough research that has been done to be able to make sure that we're able to not be concerned about the health concerns from having a cell tower in a residential area," he said. 

The group reached out to SaskTel about their worries and heard back from them about a week ago.

"There's not much that they were able to end up giving us, other than they were following federal regulation," he said.

They also contacted Swift Current MLA and Saskatchewan Minister of Health Everett Hindley asking for his help. The second-term MLA reached out to the now-former Minister responsible for SaskTel Don Morgan and had the consultation period extended by a week.

"We were getting a lot of inquiries about this particular issue and there's not a lot of time," he said.

"No decisions have been made and I'm hopeful that the resident's concerns are taken into account before any decisions are made on that." 

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