Cell phone tower opponents here cheered Community Board 10 when the board joined allies in Queens and Park Slope, as the City Council moves to make it tougher for cell phone companies to place towers in neighborhoods, fearing possible adverse health effects.
At a recent Board 10 meeting, the board voted to back a call for stronger federal action to curb cellular antennae and support stronger rules on telecommunication towers placements. Giving the board’s efforts a boost were a recent achievement of tower opponents in Park Slope and new legislation at City Hall.
Queens Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., chair of the council’s Public Safety Committee, announced Wednesday that he is introducing a new bill to tighten antennae-siting regulations by creating an oversight process to inform local civic and elected officials about placement plans.
Meanwhile, a group in Park Slope celebrated its victory on Monday evening in its protracted court fight with T-Mobile.
Champagne flowed for “The Concerned Shareholders of 130 Eighth Ave.” as the group celebrated its victory. For three years, the group had fought to prevent a 16,000-pound cell antenna from being put onto the roof of their coop building at 130 Eighth Ave. The ruling and new bill being introduced are good signs, said Leonore Gordon of the Eighth Avenue group, who is also active in a national coalition.
“Shareholders were worried about research which is respected by the international scientific community such as the BioInitiative Report, suggesting serious health risks posed by these antennae’s low-level, continuous electromagnetic frequency radiation,” said Gordon.
The group was established after a former coop board president signed a contract in 2004 to install a tower without informing most shareholders. When a cell tower was erected atop a building over a Haagen Dazs store on Seventh Avenue in 2006, Gordon joined with opponents in California and Chicago to form CLOUT, the Coalition for Local Oversight of Utility Technologies.
In November 2008 T-Mobile reached an agreement with the protest group, culminating in the victory celebration on Monday when the court case ended.
Emission Health Effects an Issue
Possible health effects, not yet officially and firmly confirmed or denied, are a concern of cell tower opponents in Bay Ridge. After a year of protests, an antenna was removed in December from an apartment building across from P.S. 185.
At the Board 10 meeting, the board voted to support the Astoria Neighborhood Coalition by signing onto a civic petition “seeking federal action regarding the proliferation of cellular antennae,” said Chair Joanne Seminara of the zoning and land use committee.
The board also voted its support, based on a letter sent to its office by Queens Board 11, to request the Department of City Planning enact a “text amendment to strengthen rules and regulations for the placement of telecommunication towers and poles, especially in residential districts,” Seminara said.
There are more than 70 cell phone towers in the Board 10 area. There is virtually no way now to prevent antennae from being installed on rooftops, opponents said. The concern is with the transmissions from the towers into the local atmosphere.
Telecommunication companies deny dangers to health, saying that the evidence for concern has not been proven and is inconclusive. The towers are needed, they said, to handle the increasing cell phone usage and demand.
There has not been much discussion, so far, about ideas such as placing warning zone signs in areas with high concentrations of cell phone towers for those fearing possible health risks.
“I will work with the New York congressional delegation in an attempt to address this issue, and will ask for legislation to amend this section, so that we as a city can enact laws that best protect our citizens, while not preventing cell phone carriers from providing an important and vital service,” Vallone wrote.
Noting that the health effect studies for the 1996 federal law on the subject were made in the 1980s, Vallone asked the companies for “a renewed determination be made to collect fresh data on the health effects posed to humans by cell antenna radio frequencies.”
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Cell Phone Tower Opponents Celebrate as City Council Acts
Source: Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Date: 05/07/2009
