Pendleton County, Green Bank officials work to find solutions amid National Radio Quiet Zone disputes

FRANKLIN, W.Va. (WBOY) — Since it was established in 1958, the National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ) has limited wireless communication over Pendleton County and other remote parts of West Virginia in the name of science. However, as technology has advanced and people rely more on cell phones and the internet, local officials are struggling to find solutions.

On Tuesday, the Pendleton County Commission adopted a resolution condemning restrictions imposed by the NRQZ . The zone covers more than 10,000 square miles of land in West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland and limits what kind of radio transmissions can be broadcast. This is all done to reduce interference that can affect sensitive communication sites like the NSA Sugar Grove station and the Green Bank Observatory.

While radio transmissions aren’t outright prohibited in the NRQZ, restrictions in certain areas can cause big problems for first responders, who need to be ready for emergencies no matter where they might happen.

Rick Gillespie, the Emergency Coordinator for Pendleton County, told 12 News that the regulations are “strangling” the county and its first responders and are “keeping us farther and farther behind the technology of the day.”

“In our world today, we rely not only on digital radio systems, but data systems such as mobile data terminals and police vehicles, ambulances,” Gillespie said. “In several ways, there is no workaround because everything we rely on is being limited by the quiet zone.”

However, this problem is far from new, and officials have worked together in the past to try and find ways to communicate wirelessly without disrupting the work at Green Bank and Sugar Grove.

Internet-based communication

One option that provided some hope to responders and residents was Starlink, a broadband internet service that enables users to access high-speed internet almost anywhere on Earth using thousands of satellites.

However, Chris De Pree, the Radio Spectrum Manager for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), told 12 News that Starlink may not be the silver bullet everyone wants it to be.

“The problem now is you’ve got things flying overhead and potentially right in the most sensitive part of the beam of the telescope; right where it’s pointing in the sky. You can have a satellite pass through that beam. Not only does that cause RFI (radio frequency interference), but that even has the potential to damage sensitive receivers,” De Pree said.

Gillespie told 12 News that some Starlink users in Pendleton County had been able to use the service until recently. Starlink informed them that they would be unable to use the service any further due to being located in the NRQZ, although no regulations in the quiet zone have actually changed. Gillespie described this as “one of the final straws to break the camel’s back.”

“We rely on that to deploy Starlink to have communications at remote command posts—at sites of emergencies. And at the suggestion of the Quiet Zone, we’ve considered equipping our ambulances with the mobile Starlink and motion systems so that they would have the ability to communicate no matter where they are. So we’re finding every means of modern communication being limited by the quiet zone restrictions,” Gillespie said.

Starlink officially announced that it was available nationwide in October 2023 , but the map it shared showed a significant “dead zone” in the area of the NRQZ.

Radio-based communication

Over the years, officials on both sides have also butted heads over the issue of wireless communications. Gillespie told 12 News that the NRQZ has executed a waiver for VHF-based communication devices, but that emergency services in Pendleton County only use UHF-based ones and that a transition to VHF would be too expensive.

“This is akin to telling us that we need to transition to diesel vehicles, moving from an all-gasoline fleet, all while providing us zero funding to make the transition,” Gillespie said.

De Pree said that “if there is a money-based solution, [the NRAO] will work with them to find it.” He also said that within the past week, the NRQZ office has been in touch with the West Virginia State Police on the topic of switching to a dual-band system in order to use both UHF and VHF radio channels.

Cellular-based communication

So what about communicating over cell towers? The NRAO told 12 News that it’s worked with AT&T to create a “minimal” modification of the current tower at Long Ridge, a site just east of Franklin, that would provide cellular overage while remaining within the guidelines of the NRQZ.

Gillespie said that while this improvement has helped the area surrounding Franklin, it’s still not enough because much of the county is still within a dead zone.

A map published by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) shows that multiple areas of Pendleton County are lacking broadband coverage including Miles and the region south of Brandywine.

What to do going forward?

One change proposed by the Pendleton County Commission is for Green Bank and Sugar Grove to adopt signal filtering technology at their sites instead of requiring radio silence over such a large area. However, De Pree said that this isn’t practical for places like Green Bank.

“There are solutions which are things called notch filters, right? A notch filter would allow you to sort of block a certain part of the observing band. Those will reduce the noise by a certain amount, they don’t eliminate it,” De Pree said. “Electronics, you can reduce the signal by a certain amount, but there are limitations to how much you can reduce it. There are limitations to sort of how much of a band you can notch out.”

With all of these issues, the National Science Foundation has committed to a $2 million study to find permanent solutions to the emergency communications issue, with Pendleton County set to be the pilot community and main beneficiary of the study. However, the study will take time to complete and won’t be an immediate solution responders can use tomorrow.

“There is a technical solution and we will work hard to get there,” De Pree said. “There’s a technical solution that may cost money, but there is a technical solution, and NRAO is committed to making sure that the people of Pendleton County are safe and that the missions of Sugar Grove and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory can continue.”

However, Gillespie and officials in Pendleton County aren’t convinced that they’re being prioritized.

“The response so far has been that they need these restrictions to do their mission and we keep turning it around. ‘When is our mission going to be important?’ We provide services to the community in their darkest hours and our mission is very important as well. And somehow we’ve got to find the middle ground that we’ve not reached as of now,” Gillespie said.

The resolution issued by the Pendleton County Commission earlier this week also mentioned plans to make formal requests to the United States Congress and the Biden Administration for additional funding to meet the demands of the NRQZ. It also said that while it will settle for fewer restrictions, it would prefer the NRQZ be dissolved entirely.

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