Re: [pf] More on Cell Phone Towers

by Jill Taylor Bussiere

08 December 2000 01:12 UTC

David,
    I read your interesting article, and will look on the web for Ted
Kreines.  Thanks.

    I think you may be right about the safety of the kind of tower proposed
in our neighborhood.  But here's another issue that has come up that I am
concerned with.

    By requiring cell phone companies to use existing towers, or by allowing
a particular company (in our instance, Sprint) to put up a tower, knowing
that they plan to rent to others, aren't we making the playing field
unequal?  Essentially, we are giving Sprint the right to charge rent to all
other companies that want to go through this area, should we approve it.  Or
perhaps we could encourage some other arrangement.  Most likely we have no
jurisdiction over encouraging any arrangement such as that.

    In the notice of our meeting, there was mention that our town board is
looking into some sort of tax on the rent or some such thing, so there is a
benefit to the town.

    Whether the towers are unhealthy or not, the cell phones seem to be.  I
don't know what our role is there.  There are many unhealthy things around.

                    Jill

> Jill,
> A couple of years ago I wrote a short article for Backpacker magazine
> about how cell towers had required the closing of two hiking trails, one
> in Vermont and one in New Mexico. ("High Anxieties," Backpacker, Apr.
> 1998, p. 18,
> http://www.nasw.org/users/appell/articles/HighAnxiety.html). These were
> large tranmission towers, used to haul large amounts of
> telecommunications traffic from peak to peak using microwaves -- in
> other words, much, much stronger than your average community cell tower.
> I had to jump over some DANGER--TURN BACK! signs on top of Vermont's Mt
> Mansfield and climb a steep trail to snap a few quick photos for the
> article, which was actually kind of fun.
>
> I interviewed a guy named Ted Kreines, who is a cell tower consultant
> for towns. You might find him to be a useful resource. Do a Google
> search on his name and you'll find many links that might be useful.
>
> I doubt ordinary cell towers emit enough radiation to be dangerous, but
> I haven't studied them much and if you find out otherwise I'd be
> interested in hearing more.
> David