Tower Decommissioning, Removal & Site Restoration

The full lifecycle, not just the steel. Default scope:

• Equipment decom — antennas, radios, ODUs, and feed-lines down first, in controlled rigging.
• Structural teardown — guyed, self-support, or monopole, method set against the structure.
• Foundation handling — cap-in-place, partial break-out, or full removal per your land-use agreement.
• Hazmat handling — lead paint, mercury lamps, PCB-risk equipment, asbestos abated through licensed disposal.
• Paperwork — FCC ASR cancellation, FAA final notification, obstruction-light NOTAM closeout, SHPO or tribal THPO consultation where applicable, stormwater permit closeout.
• Site restoration — grading, topsoil, reseeding, and fence disposition to the stamped target.
• Scrap-value accounting — copper, steel, and salvage-recovered gear credited back on the closeout.

You can carve any piece out of scope. Most owners hand the whole lifecycle to us because the coordination cost of splitting the paperwork is higher than the scope itself.

On-site time depends on structure height, foundation scope, and access:

• Small WISP or utility monopole (60 to 150 ft) with cap-in-place foundation: 3 to 5 days.
• Standard self-support or guyed tower (150 to 300 ft) with partial foundation break-out: 1 to 2 weeks.
• Tall broadcast or comms tower (300 to 500+ ft) with full foundation removal and restoration: 2 to 4 weeks.

Paperwork runs in parallel before mobilization. ASR cancellation coordination and SHPO / THPO consultation are the two items that can extend the total project timeline (commonly 4 to 8 weeks of lead time for the historic review on federal or tribal jurisdiction sites). We sequence those so they don’t become the critical path.

Your call. Three common dispositions:

• Return to the owner. Antennas, radios, ODUs, and any salvageable gear come down in controlled rigging, get serialized, crated, and shipped back to your depot or a location you specify.
• Resale prep. For gear with residual market value (current-generation Tarana, Ubiquiti, Cambium, Nokia), we can stage for direct resale or for a broker network. Serial inventory delivered either way.
• Recycling. Obsolete or damaged gear routed through e-waste recycling partners, with documented chain-of-custody.

Tell us which track by gear class (or by specific serial) and we scope to it. No gear goes into an unsorted scrap stream without your sign-off.

Driven by your land-use agreement and your end-state plan for the site:

• Cap-in-place. Foundation broken to roughly three feet below grade, rebar cut flush, hole topped with native fill. Common where the site will be reused or where the underlying land-use doesn’t require full removal.
• Partial break-out. Foundation demoed to four to six feet below grade, rebar removed, hole backfilled with compacted native material. The common middle-path scope on NEPA-reviewed sites.
• Full removal. Foundation demoed to original subgrade, concrete hauled for crush-and-recycle, rebar removed, native fill compacted and graded. Required on restoration-to-agricultural or restoration-to-historic-use sites, and often on tribal-land decommissioning scope.

Our foundations and civil team runs the excavation scope. The foundation work is the same crew that builds foundations, just running the process in reverse.

Yes. The three main revenue-recovery streams:

• Copper. The grounding ring, Heliax center conductors, power feeds, antenna shunts, and (on older broadcast sites) bus bars in the equipment shelter are all copper. Scrap value on a typical comms-tower decom can materially offset project cost.
• Structural steel. Tower legs, bracing, guy hardware, and base plates all go to a mill-grade recycler. Steel prices fluctuate, but the scrap credit is never zero.
• Resellable gear. Current-generation radios and antennas that still have market value get staged for resale or direct-return to the owner.

Hazmat disposal is the offsetting cost: lead paint on aviation-painted steel is the big one on older towers that were painted orange and white before the move to unpainted strobe lighting. Net settlement (scrap credits minus hazmat and disposal) is line-itemed in the closeout accounting. You see every number.

Yes. Towers marked under older versions of FAA AC 70/7460-1 (pre-current AC 70/7460-1M) were commonly painted with lead-based aviation-orange-and-white coatings. Cutting that steel without proper controls produces airborne lead.

Our decom scope includes:

• Lead-paint testing before any cutting work starts.
• Containment and PPE protocol sized to the exposure rating (ranging from routine respirators on light scope to full negative-pressure containment on heavy abatement).
• EPA RRP-certified lead-work leads on abatement scope.
• Manifested disposal at a licensed facility.

If lead is present, it is priced and scoped into the quote, not discovered after mobilization.

Yes. Communications towers on tribal-jurisdiction sites require coordination with the tribe’s Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO) under NHPA Section 106 before demolition begins. Structures on federal land or recorded historic sites go through the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) on the same framework.

We coordinate or file the Section 106 consultation, hold construction until the review returns, and document the outcome in the closeout file. For tribal nations running their own broadband programs or consolidating legacy infrastructure, this service layer is often the deciding factor in contractor selection — the paperwork is harder than the steel.

Decom work on tribal sites also commonly specifies full foundation removal as a restoration target. We scope to the tribe’s specification, not a generic cap-in-place default.

Fixed fee on defined scope, with unit rates and change orders for field conditions. Quoted against structure type, height, foundation scope, and access. Rough ranges, before scrap-value credit:

• Small monopole (60 to 150 ft) with cap-in-place foundation: mid five figures.
• Standard self-support or guyed tower (150 to 300 ft) with partial foundation break-out: mid five to low six figures.
• Tall broadcast or comms tower (300 to 500+ ft) with full foundation removal and restoration: mid to upper six figures.

Scrap credits (copper, steel, and resellable gear) typically return a meaningful fraction of the gross quote, and are line-itemed on the closeout. Hazmat scope (lead-paint abatement, mercury lamps, PCB equipment, asbestos) adds cost where it applies and is scoped from the pre-demo testing, not guessed at.

Multi-site fleet decommissioning (WISP retirement, utility modernization, tower-REIT pruning) sees program-rate pricing and dedicated crew rotation. Send us the site and you’ll have a line-itemed quote inside a week.

Send us the site (address or coordinates), the structure type and height, the ASR number if registered, the foundation scope you want (cap, partial, or full removal), and your target window. If you have a soils or environmental report on file, include it. If there’s a SHPO or THPO review to sequence, tell us upfront.

Request a quote here or call us at (763) 280-6050. Scheduled decom work typically quoted inside a week. Multi-site programs typically quoted inside two weeks against the site list.