More than 40 people attended a Planning Board public hearing on a 125-foot monopole telecommunications tower proposed to be built at the National Grid facility on Bearfoot Road.
While National Grid representatives spoke about the necessity to have a tower at the site and how their plan meets the town's zoning bylaws, neighbors are worried about the tower's appearance and potential for property values to drop.
Neighbors are also worried about potential health risks from radiofrequency emissions, though the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 says local governments cannot use health and environmental issues to deny a special permit for a cell tower.
"If the tower goes up and three antennas are put on it, I will move," said John Stevenson, a doctor who lives on Edmunds Way whose children's bedroom window is at the level the top of the tower would be, he said.
Ashland Board of Health member Leslie Githens also spoke about potential health risks, urging caution about emissions despite the federal stance on cell towers posing no risk.
"Twenty years ago they couldn't say cigarettes caused cancer," she said. "I think there could be something there - like cigarettes, like lead, like mercury."
Non-health concerns with the proposed tower centered around the need for it to be lit for airplanes and how visible it would be to neighbors, and in winter.
Property values were also discussed, with Stevenson saying he expects his to decline 7 to 10 percent because his view would be obstructed by the tower.
Planning Board members, National Grid representatives and neighbors also discussed whether Deb Blasko's in-home day care business fell under the category of a school.
Blasko's home is the closest to the proposed tower, which would be build 580 feet away. Zoning bylaws do not permit telecommunication towers within 1,000 feet of a school's property line.
"Would you want your little child or grandchild living next to it?" Deb Blasko asked National Grid lawyer Robert Longden.
Longden, of Bowditch & Dewey, LLP, in Worcester, said Blasko's business was an in-home day care, not a school.
"It is not classified as a school," he said. "It is our position that this particular setback does not apply to this proposal."
Blasko, and her husband Tom, who also voiced concerns due to the health of their 6-year-old son who is in remission for leukemia, submitted to the Planning Board a petition signed by more than 150 people who oppose the tower.
Other residents questioned whether the feasibility of National Grid placing its dish on an AT&T tower on Bearfoot Road less than a mile away had been adequately explored.
That tower already has reached structural capacity with five other wireless carrier co-locators already there, said Brian Allen, a National Grid wireless communications consultant.
Allen also said the proposed tower would better be able to accomplish National Grid's goal of providing a point-to-point communications link with a tower in Boylston, and the proposed location was chosen because it would provide a clear path.
A report on the radiofrequency emissions the telecommunications dish would produce is .0025 percent of what is allowable by the FCC, Allen said. But residents are concerned with cell phone antennas adding more emissions, as zoning bylaws allow for three additional co-locators on towers.
Longden said National Grid would like having the pole exclusively for its use and had included provisions for other carriers to align with zoning bylaws. Neighbors said they support that idea.
The Planning Board ultimately voted to continue the public hearing to Tuesday, Sept. 1 at 7:30 p.m.
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Northborough residents fired up about cell phone tower
Source: The MetroWest Daily News
Date: 08/04/2009
