Washington couple stunned after 120-foot tower appears on their property. Now the company that put it there is threatening to cut their power

“It’s not OK to do this to private homeowners,” Covert told NBC’s King 5 local news. “It feels like bullying.”

But the issue is that OPALCO is a San Juan County non-profit co-op where members receive discounts on their utilities as a trade-off for easements that let OPALCO build infrastructure on their properties.

Covert and Goudie say their easement only covers landscaping, while OPALCO — which didn’t respond to Moneywise’s request for comment — claims on their website that “The pole site in question was on the property mentioned, with the previous owner’s permission, prior to the current owners’ purchase of the land.” It adds that “members agree to grant OPALCO easements when they join the cooperative” and that “OPALCO will have the right to use as the easement allows.”

And that key word, “allows,” is what a court will consider as Covert and Goudie pursue litigation to topple the tower.

A towering threat to home values?

A 2025 San Juan Journal article about the dispute notes that the couple bought the property in 2017 and that they say the easement that accompanied it “contains no accommodation for utilities to be placed above ground.”

They were aware of a wooden tower structure on their property, the story says, but it was replaced with a steel tower that’s “20 feet taller” along with a bigger generator that is now “adding noise during startup cycles” in an elevated area that offers “the best potential for a view.”

Covert told the outlet that she and her husband didn’t even know the tower was going up until a neighbor inquired about it, as “We live on the adjoining property, and it’s uphill and out of sight from us.” She added that “They had never reached out to us, as the property owners, to let us know they were doing this work on our property.”

The article adds that Covert and Goudie’s neighbors, Norma and George Andreadis, are also “taking action in a similar lawsuit against the utility.”

Cell phone towers on residential properties, meanwhile, could raise significant issues for homeowners.

Obstructed views and property value impacts are two big ones — with a 2019 study of homes in Georgia finding that “proximity to cell phone towers can reduce selling price up to 7.6%” and that “the negative effect is larger when housing prices are declining.”

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) classifies cell towers under “Hazards & Nuisances,” while the American Cancer Society says that, as for health concerns related to radiofrequency (RF) radiation levels from the towers, evidence is scant to nonexistent.

To protest, or to profit? That is the question

While rules around co-ops could complicate matters in terms of cell towers on or near your property, the non-profit Environmental Health Trust suggests that, in general, those who oppose a tower going up near their home, a school or anywhere else in their community should organize locally and join forces with other residents or groups that might be impacted.

“People get involved on cell tower issues not only because of the radiation, but also because of the issues of property devaluation and aesthetics,” they note. “All of these issues are important to discuss, and they bring people together into a working coalition.”

The group also advises joining community meetings on the subject, reaching out to local media to share concerns and presenting elected officials with documented evidence of your concerns.