With final balloting due this week that would give/not give the Clearwood Assn. the authority to contact cell phone companies about placing a cell tower within the community, voters would be wise to arm themselves with all of the knowledge they can, to make an informed decision. While the issue of a cell tower has brought out alot of friction,
knowledge equates power and that power overrules all of the rhetoric.
While some may vote for putting feelers out to obtain cell phone service merely for the convenience of having cell phone service in the Bald Hills and care not about the consequences, others prefer all of the facts, for they moved there to be away from all of that.
Quoting AlterNet,
“In the wee hours of July 14, a 45-year-old Australian named John Patterson climbed into a tank and drove it through the streets of Sydney, knocking down six cell-phone towers and an electrical substation along the way. Patterson, a former telecommunications worker, reportedly had mapped out the locations of the towers, which he claimed were harming his health.
In recent years, protesters in England and Northern Ireland have brought down cell towers by sawing, removing bolts, and pulling with tow trucks and ropes. In one such case, locals bought the structure and sold off pieces of it as souvenirs to help with funding of future protests. In attempts to fend off objections to towers in Germany, some churches have taken to disguising them as giant crucifixes.
Opposition to towers usually finds more socially acceptable outlets, and protests are being heard more often than ever in meetings of city councils, planning commissions, and other government bodies. This summer alone, citizen efforts to block cell towers have sprouted in, among a host of other places, including California, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, North Dakota and north of the border in Ontario and British Columbia. Transmitters are already banned from the roofs of schools in many districts.
For years, towers have been even less welcome in the United Kingdom, where this summer has seen disputes across the country.
Most opponents cite not only aesthetics but also concerns over potential health effects of electromagnetic (EM) fields generated by the towers. Once ridiculed as crackpots and Luddites, they’re starting to get backup from the scientific community…
Even more recently, health concerns have been raised about the antenna masts that serve cell phones and other wireless devices. EM fields at, say, a couple of blocks from a tower are not as strong as those from a wireless device held close to the body; nevertheless many city-dwellers are now continuously bathed in emissions that will only grow in their coverage and intensity.
Last year, the RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia closed off the top two floors of its 17-story business school for a time because five employees working on its upper floors had been diagnosed with brain tumors in a single month, and seven since 1999. Cell phone towers had been placed on the building’s roof a decade earlier and, although there was no proven link between them and the tumors, university officials were taking no chances.
Data on the health effects of cell or W-Fi towers are still sparse and inconsistent…
San Francisco, one of the world’s most technology-happy cities, is home to more than 2400 cell-phone antennas, and many of those transmitters are due to be replaced with more powerful models that can better handle text messaging and photographs, and possibly a new generation of even higher-frequency phones.
Now there’s hot-and-heavy debate over plans to add 2200 more towers for a city-wide Earthlink/Google Wi-Fi network. On July 31, the city’s Board of Supervisors considered an appeal by the San Francisco Neighborhood Antenna-Free Union (SNAFU) that the network proposal be put through an environmental review — a step that up to now has not been required for such telecommunications projects.”
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4 comments
There has been too much bitter division over this cell tower in this community.
It seems to me that those who want cell phone service don’t care much where the tower is so long as the reception is good. And those who oppose it don’t object to cell phones, they just don’t want a tower so close by in Clearwood.
Isn’t there a way to find some common ground here?
Bill Owen
Clearwood resident
oh, the cell phones. ya know, there was a morning show, I can’t remember which one, that had a specialist w/ cell phones on who actually worked FOR the cell phone companies, who could NOT tell the people that they weren’t getting brain tumors from using their cell phones. He didn’t say they could prove they did, but he couldn’t prove they didn’t and they have cases of people who are believed to have gotten brain tumors from their cell phones. He nicely commented for people to use a hands free loud speaker as much as possible. That says enough for me. Scary. I think cell phones are going to be the equivalent to cigarettes for our grandparents. They all used to smoke b/c they DIDN’T KNOW how bad it was for you. Our grandchildren are going to ask us “why did you use cell phones so much when they cause brain tumors?” And we are going to say “we didn’t know what they were doing to us.” That’s my two cents on it.
The reason why there is so much animosity toward the cell towers in England is that it is a small country with many people, pretty much all of them have (or had) a cell phone. Everyone wanted to be able to talk to their friends constantly or be able to stay in touch with their business associates. As a result, there is a very high density of cell antennas everywhere there radiating 24/7. It is impossible not to be continually irradiated by the dna damaging microwaves. The longer one is in that environment, the sicker one will become, it is only a matter of time….
The FCC, FDA, in America have effectively smothered any complaint or request for real information or research. Other countries are not so blind or ill-led.
In the USA, entities with clout like the health insurance industry will eventually start realizing that future profits will dissipate (or else severely restrict their insurance coverage) because of increased medical costs.
These costs will come from more and more chronically sick patients who have had their health destroyed by big business’ pursuit of higher and higher frequencies.
Like we can look forward to what is called 3rd Generation systems in which wireless transmission of video is possible. Just shut up, drink your Starbucks latte and watch the game on your iPhone. Meanwhile, your marvellous self-replicating DNA is being shredded .
Look at the cell towers cropping up all over Lacey, Olympia, Tacoma. When you see more and more of the smaller antennas, you are seeing more and more higher frequency radiating structures.
Then, seek out cell-phone free environments, they will become premium places to live.
God help our children and grand-children for we certainly seem unable to ensure their future health and wellbeing.
Brian Cawley
50 years in electronics engineering in England, Scotland, Switzerland and California and now resident in the temporarily radiation-free environment of beautiful, all natural Clearwood, Yelm
Once again unbiased reporting is out the window. We did NOT vote on having a cell tower placed in Clearwood. We voted to see if it was FEASABLE to have one put in. That means will it fit,will it pass all zoning constraints, will the cell companies even consider putting one in. There are many variables in getting one put in and that is why we voted on the feasability study. Once it has been determined that one can be put in and that a cell company wants to, then there will be a vote on having it put in. All this fuss is over nothing. If a tower can’t be placed then thats it, it’s over. Certain individuals have been knocking on doors, passing leaflets, sending three page letters full of misinformation and lies about this whole issue. I even refuted them with information from a web site they claimed as their source of info against the cell tower. They never bothered to read on and get the whole truth. As it stands the vote was for the feasability study. This means someone will come out and tell us if it can be done. If yes we will vote on having one installed, if no, then it’s a dead issue. I just wish people would practice what they preach when they bring up that you should arm yourself with knowledge, aparently alot of people have being going off half cocked. Finally to think that we don’t care about where the tower goes is idiotic. We do care. Ultimately we will abort any plan to install one if its going to be unsightly or a nuisance. Towers nowadays are built to resemble a large variety of trees and to be able to pick one out is near impossible. However if it comes to safety over asthetics I for one will vote for it. My family’s safety is my main concern. With phone and power outages the norm out there I would prefer the peace of mind knowing I can get through to emergency services at anytime. To many instances at Clearwood have happened where people were stranded or have had to walk or run to the nearest phone for help. With over three thousand people living in Clearwood it has become a small community from the campground that it used to be back when it was founded. I would hate to think that a thousand homes have to be technologicaly stranded because of the misinformation and lies purported by a few misguided individuals.
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