Union Telephone has filed conditional use permit applications for two communications towers it illegally erected in Natrona County, county development director Blair Leist recently told the Natrona County Commission.

Leist also has worked with the company's representatives and said they are cooperating now compared to earlier this summer.

"I have been one of the strongest advocates of punitive [measures]," Leist said. "But they have been working with us."

He and the development department determined in June that the Evanston-based Union Telephone erected six towers without the proper permitting, received an initial commitment from the company to fix the problems, and then heard nothing until August.

The commissioners urged Leist to confront Union Telephone and warn the company that inaction would result in litigation, fines and dismantling the towers.

To resolve the dispute, Leist and Union Telephone's site development manager Chris Manley and project engineer Alyssa Cooper told commissioners last week about the efforts to submit conditional use permit applications for the illegal towers.

Manley said the company did not talk to the commission during the summer because it needed the time to understand the application process.

"It was hard for us to know what they were looking for," he said. "We were very close to finishing the applications."

Union Telephone is working on the conditional use permit applications for a tower in the Gas Hills and one near Alcova, Manley said.

The Alcova tower prompted Leist's investigation after property owner Cody Sutherland of Colorado sent the county a photo showing an approximately 80-foot-tall tower erected on a ridge close to his home.

County regulations, Leist said, require telecommunications companies to co-locate their transmission equipment on existing towers instead of building separate towers in the same area.

Union Telephone should have placed its equipment on a tower owned by a company called American Tower instead of building a new tower, he said.

Manley said the U.S. Bureau of Land Management authorized that tower and later told the company to relocate it.

Union Telephone moved the tower to the Alcova area and did not tell the county, he said. "We moved it without following the proper protocol," he said.

Leist said Union Telephone's Alcova tower will be dismantled if the company can co-locate its equipment on the American Tower structure.

Commissioner Barb Peryam said she wasn't impressed with some of Manley's explanations, and reminded him that the county still could sue and dismantle the illegal towers if nothing happens.

"That's very nice, but that's only part of the problem," Peryam said. "Communication -- even though that's your business -- hasn't been very good on your end."

Union Telephone will comply, Manley responded.

"We're working on all of these to make sure our back yard is clean," he said.

Reach Tom Morton at (307) 266-0592, or at tom.morton@trib.com. Read his blog at tribtown.trib.com/TomMorton/blog