Patapsco Valley State Park’s rugged trails and winding river make it one of Maryland’s busiest state parks, but its steep, forested inclines block cellphone and radio service.

State officials consider the many dead zones dangerous. Some 2 million people each year visit the park that sprawls for miles along the Patapsco River to go hiking, mountain biking, kayaking and swimming.

So the officials plan to build a radio tower at a peak near the park’s edge that would rise high above the trees. The tower would give park rangers comprehensive communications coverage for responding to emergencies.

Neighbors, though, aren’t keen on the tower. Flyers distributed ahead of a Catonsville community meeting Thursday night nicknamed the project the “Tower of Terror.”

Around 100 people packed Catonsville’s Baltimore County Arts Guild clubhouse to hear from state officials and to make their concerns about the tower known.

Over almost two hours, residents clashed with state officials. Attendees described the proposed tower as a monstrosity that will ruin views of Patapsco Valley State Park. They worried about the tower’s warning lights for aircraft, increased car traffic and impacts on their property values.

If anyone can sympathize with the community’s concerns, Brandon Renehan told the crowd, it’s he. The director of operations for the state radio system, MD FiRST, Renehan grew up on the Howard County side of the park in Elkridge and said he understands the value of these serene spaces.

Still, he said, emergency responders have seen a need for better coverage in the Patapsco Valley for decades.

“Howard County, Baltimore County, state users have not had reliable coverage in this park basically ever,” he said.

Officials from the Maryland Department of Information Technology, which includes MD FiRST, distributed note cards for attendees to write questions.

It didn’t take long for things to go off script.

For much of the meeting, Kathy Bogner, who lives in the Patapsco Woods neighborhood near the project site, held a poster illustrating the scale of the nearly 350-foot tower compared with surrounding trees.

Why not build multiple shorter towers? she asked. Bogner and others argued that this approach would be better for the park and surrounding community than one giant tower.

Jennifer Zambino, program director for the Maryland FiRST system, said building at multiple sites would increase costs significantly. Plus, if the state opted for multiple towers, it would need to build roads to each, requiring the removal of many more trees.

“If it’s not a residential area, who cares?” one woman called out.

After the meeting, Renehan said the state IT department has been exploring options for this radio tower for roughly a decade. It chose a hilltop about 1,000 feet from the nearest homes, in the park’s Hilton Area, on the south side of Catonsville, at least 18 months ago.

The compound would be fenced within an 80-foot-by-80-foot area beside a Department of Natural Resources maintenance building. At the top of the tower and midway up, red lights will signal to aircraft at night, though officials said the bulbs are designed to shine out and up, rather than down on the community nearby.

In response to earlier public feedback, state officials have promised to plant trees to replace those they’ll chop down, seed native grasses and remove a shorter tower that’s closer to residences.

The project, which Renehan estimates will cost $3.5 million, hasn’t gone out to bid and needs approval by the state Board of Public Works. Officials expect construction could begin as soon as this spring, and they insisted there are no other viable locations for the tower.

On a typical day, multiple emergency calls are placed from Patapsco Valley State Park. Data provided by the state IT department shows 851 emergency calls from the park last year, up from 706 in 2023.

Sgt. Murray Hunt, a park ranger, told attendees the service gaps are dangerous. He recounted one episode in which he and another ranger had to recover the body of a drowning victim from the river. Although they were within sight of each other, they couldn’t hear over the noise of the river and, because of a dead zone, they had no way to talk.

In another episode after 2018’s historic floods, Hunt and others searched for missing people, unaware they’d already been saved.

For Dave Ferraro, director of Friends of Patapsco Valley State Park, who also attended the meeting Thursday night, said the park needs more resources for public safety. Because of the communication gaps, when Ferraro’s group hosts hikes, endurance competitions and mountain bike races, it contracts with a private radio group.

Numerous residents said they don’t object to the need for a tower but they felt blindsided by the state’s process.

The Department of Information Technology hosted one community meeting in July. But the event was held miles from the impacted neighborhoods, in a different county, and many at Thursday’s meeting said they never heard about it.

The community recognizes the need for better communications, said Heidi Hitchcock, a resident of the Patapsco Woods neighborhood for 21 years. But why did so many in the room learn about the tower only in the last few days?

“The optics of this are awful,” she said.

At points, Baltimore County Sen. Benjamin Brooks attempted to mediate between state officials and residents. The Democrat said he’d convened the meeting so the community could voice its concerns.

Attendees didn’t always see it that way.

“This is bullcrap,” one man said after Brooks attempted to refocus the meeting on the note card questions.

“Remember this at the polls,” another shouted.

Residents called for another meeting, but state officials made no commitments Thursday night.

Under state law, officials aren’t required to hold any meetings.

Baltimore County Councilman Pat Young, who watched much of Thursday’s meeting from the back of the room, considers that a problem. Young said he’s still learning about the communications service gaps in Patapsco Valley, but he wishes state officials had been more proactive about engaging the community. Unlike the state, Baltimore County mandates community meetings for projects like this one.

Young said he hopes the crowd’s feedback prompts state officials to reassess.

Thursday night, though, there was little sign of compromise.

“It’s going to disrupt the park landscape,” Tom Bianco, a Patapsco Woods resident and organizer with Catonsville’s Stop the Tower of Terror Committee, told state officials. “It’s going to make it have an industrialized look. We just think it ruins the pristine park setting.”