NYT on Cell Phone Tower Controversy 481
prostoalex writes "The New York Times discusses the controversy of placing cell phone towers on top of hills, a practice to which many people object. According to the article, people frequently complain about the visual impediment and are afraid that property values will decline or some health damage will be done with radio waves. At the same time, people get quite irritated when proper phone service is not provided by the operators, and the calls keep dropping or coverage is poor outside of densely populated areas. Phone companies also lease the land to place the cell phone tower for $30,000-$50,000, which is attractive to many landowners, but some, like Sammy Barsa from NYT article, find themselves persona non grata in the community."
It's actually a pretty sweet deal (Score:5, Interesting)
And the 28,000 we recieve a year is as much as the income of a low-income family.
Cell Phone Towers & Light Pollution (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:A Little Creativity Please ... (Score:2, Interesting)
You can tell it's a radio tower. It's the one tree that's twice as tall as all of the other trees, plus it looks fake. If anything, it's more of an eyesore.
Typical "yes, but not in my backyard" syndrome (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It's actually a pretty sweet deal (Score:5, Interesting)
Make them less ugly (Score:4, Interesting)
Surely just painting them light blue or white to suit the sky would make them half dissapear. Cheap and easy solution for a non problem.
Oh, and for the record- our TV reception SUCKS.
Church steeples are a good spot (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A Little Creativity Please ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Where I go to college, there is a cellphone antenna array on the top of the tallest building - but you will have to really know what you are looking for to find it... its hidden in a work of art - and looks like part of the building!
Very well hid.
Maybe they should send some of their people to Disney to work in some of the theme parks to discover how Disney makes art. They are damn good at making one thing look like something else. And making it look good.
Even the cable company around here is finally getting into the act and now installing the aboveground workings of their neighborhood distribution electronics in faux fiberglass boulders which blend in with the decor of the neighborhood... those ugly green "breadboxes" they had were an eyesore, graffittied on, and often kicked in disgust. Nobody wanted that ugly thing gracing their front yard.
The thing looked as out of place as an abandoned old car battery.
They need to hire some artists... and use a little creativity so they don't create neighborhood eyesores.
It is great to see in America (Score:4, Interesting)
The one thing that retains best value in America and you can't do what you please with it when you own it. Property rights are the biggest thing for a free society, without them you have nothing.
If you had proper property rights for land you own you wouldn't need the EPA becuase you could sue those big companies that polute your land and get the proper restitution for them destroying your land. But perversions in propery rights have made people dependent on the State to receive alimony for damages.
Nobody wants them neaby, so hide them (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cell Phone Towers & Light Pollution (Score:2, Interesting)
from
http://migratorybirds.fws.gov/issues/towers/beaso
"Two aspects of tower lighting that can attract birds are its color (white lights, ultraviolet, or specific wavelengths) and the duration of light (strobes, flashing lights, or steady lights) as pointed out previously. Both these aspects remain unresearched. Unfortunately, there have been no controlled experiments as to which colors birds find most or least attractive. Anecdotal reports, again as Al has pointed out earlier, are that white lights seem less attractive that red lights, and strobes might even be less attractive, but we really don't know."
Re:Church steeples are a good spot (Score:2, Interesting)
For example, instead of going about sticking massive recievers in housing sectors, why not find a way to make them less obtrusive (note: obvious)?
And as a side note: Find a way to fix these fucking towers. Whenever I plug ear-phones into my speaker's earphone jack, I get the fucking radio on it. Same goes for the phone. And to top it off, It's one of those "Classic Rock" stations. For fucks sakes. Look at this [939bobfm.com]and vomit. I hate Bryan Adams with a passion. One could say, Christ-like passion... No? Yeah, kinda shitty joke. Whatever.
Re:For crying out loud.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Leave it to the NYT (Score:3, Interesting)
More agenda-setting, just like with Augusta and the Masters not allowing women members. Only a "controversy" because the NYT ran 100 piece on it.
Yawn.
Re:Cell Phone Towers & Light Pollution (Score:4, Interesting)
Some of the more recent towers use white xenon strobes instead of the more traditional slow flashing red lights.
I suspect the strobes are what the astronomers are complaining about.
Re:NIMBY is what's going to screw us... (Score:2, Interesting)
A few years later, a Wal*Mart store was built in the affluent town. What's NIMBY about a distribution center as opposed to a retail storefront?
The American Public knows what it wants, it just can't reconcile opposing factors.
Re:NIMBY is what's going to screw us... (Score:5, Interesting)
It reminds me of some of the events that happened in Upstate NY in the last few years. Its a region where the only real employer left is government, and new jobs are supposedly a highly desired commodity to local leaders.
The first was a microprocessor fab, to be built in an existing industrial area and to employ nearly 2,500 skilled people. The objections from the surrounding suburban communities that tipped the county legislature's decision?
Increased traffic.
The second was a concrete plant intended to replace an existing plant that was built during World War 2. The new plant would use newer technologies that would decrease most types of air pollution, but increase particularate matter emmissions slightly; while tripling output and doubling employment.
The construction wasn't approved, after a multi-million dollar advertising campaign... now the existing plant is going to be expanded, which will translate into a net increase in pollution and less new employment.
But some wealthy land speculators won't have their pristine views spoiled! Thank goodness!
Re:Make them less ugly (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:business model (Score:5, Interesting)
This thing woud have dwarfed everything around it, houses and the few very short trees. It was a full sized tower you'd see off the Parkway. It would have been right behind their fence and right across the street from our house. We put up flyars showing how tall it was compared to the nearby houses, and it was like 3x taller (perhaps more, I forget).
Such a thing is an eyesore, and I could deal with that. However, big eyesoard drop property values and we consider our house an asset. They plan on moving out in a few years when they retire and obviously don't want their property value plummetting when the have to sell. It's really their one big asset.
It was tough to dissuade the town, they were getting money and were explaining how much better our cell coverage would be. That was a laugh as the coverage in town was already damn good (full bars on Verizon and AT&T at the time). So big deal, the town gets another ~50k a year and our [b]already great[/b] cell coverage would have gotten an iota better.
I can't blame individuals for wanting to do it, especially if they need the money. But for our town to want to do it for what would have been (let's face it) a small amount for a well-off town was rediculous.
It's getting easier (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess it's a mixed bag. The NIMBYs that throw a fit when someone wants to put up a cell tower are the same morons that are freaking out about the Wind Farm project in Nantucket Sound. It's free, clean energy and our oil addiction is destroying us.
I'm pretty off-topic here. Sorry.
Re:Not just cell towers (Score:4, Interesting)
Water towers are the same. They're big, surreal bulbs cropping out of tree lines. They ground an area and let you know where you are, and where you are going. They're like the biggest tree in the forest. I've always thought of them as quite pretty.
Re:It's actually a pretty sweet deal (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:business model (Score:3, Interesting)
Now we'll have people kicking themselves for not buying every hill in town.
Re:It's actually a pretty sweet deal (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.engadget.com/entry/5686037513758915/ [engadget.com]
I guess something like that would make you happy to just see a plain cell tower after that, eh?
Radiation (Score:0, Interesting)
Cell phone power is kept low because the frequencies have to be reused elsewhere. Not because of health concerns. For example, NY has a channel 5 TV station, as well as DC, but Baltimore can't use channel 5 as it would interfere with DC. Frequency reuse.
Power is kept low also for money reasons. The lower the power, the longer the battery in the phone lasts, which means the longer they can talk. Translation low power = $$$.
Remember that mice are about 5cm long, closer to the length of microwaves than our bodies.
Cell phone coverage is poor in pine forests for the same reasons, pine needles absorb the energy because their length is very close to cellular/pcs freqs.
Having worked on this stuff, I'd rather have my family living under a cell phone tower than 1 mile or less from power lines and AM/FM/TV towers. Remember that AM, FM & TV towers put out HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of watts.
Cell phones are radio whispers compared to everything around you, even your TV/monitor. Silly people have no sense of scale, just ignorant fear.
Don't hug a cell phone antenna tower, and don't stick the antenna in your ear canal, and I think you'll be just fine.
Re:It's actually a pretty sweet deal (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's actually a pretty sweet deal (Score:3, Interesting)
And properly placed, it could be useful for shade, too. (We never have enough trees, real or otherwise.)
And for $28k a year, they could enforest my back lot... in fact, where do I sign up? I've got 10 acres and NO neighbours!
Re:NIMBY is what's going to screw us... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want Beverly Hills, stay in B.H. Don't all move out to the country together, then try to make it into B.H. -- all that does is destroy the rural character that made it an attractive place to live in the first place.
In fact, we LIKE our local trailer trash and their junkyard, because hopefully they'll make it look bad to B.H. types, so they'll go build their fancy custom homes somewhere else, where they won't negatively impact OUR rural lifestyle.
The problem with "neighbour control" is that it tends to snowball. Today you can't have a pig farm, tomorrow you can't have horses or put up a barn, next year you're required to landscape your property with N-many trees and X-much lawn (do they offer to pay your increased water bills? hell no!), and the year after that you're forced to ALWAYS keep your non-running car in the garage (don't have a garage? Tough, you may be required to build one.) Yes, ALL of these are realworld scenarios I've either actually encountered, or have seen proposed.
Most bizarre case I've seen, even the colour of your MAILBOX was controlled. And this was clear out in the boonies, as Los Angeles County goes, with exactly ONE neighbour in sight.
If I recall correctly... (Score:3, Interesting)
Why can't they do this in the US? For that matter, why not just attach a cel phone antenna to the top of a tall, already existing tree? Unless there's major hurricanes or tornadoes to knock one over (a condition which would effect a tower mounted antenna as well), you wouldn't see them, except for fall (unless you bolt them to conifers).
If you use the preexisting tree scenario, you save millions if not more, because you aren't wasting money on constructing towers out of steel. In fact, with that scenario, you can built antennae on mountains, etc, as far as you want. The added benefit is, of course, conservation, because the more trees standing around your antenna, the more relocation options you have for virtually zero cost.
Re:Not just cell towers (Score:5, Interesting)
I do like the idea of wind farms in gerneral, but I also see that there might be a problem with having one in your back yard.
My hilltop, and the nearby cell tower (Score:3, Interesting)
Though my neighbors might think otherwise, I wouldn't mind having a 150 foot tall steel lightning rod nearby on a couple of acres that are just hayfield right now (I have had 3 damaging strikes in the last 2 years). I also wouldn't mind getting a piece of the cell company's largess that they seem to be handing out so freely to site owners.
Putting transponders on hilltops, high-tension towers, water tanks and so on makes practical sense, but I see many cell sites around here chosen for political reasons rather than engineering ones.
Re:You haven't been in some small communities, the (Score:3, Interesting)
No, I think it has to do with the monstrous eyesores that are being constructed every place you look, called "cell phone antennas". People see how ugly and intrusive these things are, and then you come along and say YOU want to put an antenna up, too. You're getting painted with the cellphone antenna paintbrush.
And yes, they are ugly, and no, I do not want them making the already cluttered community landscape any uglier, and no, they certainly don't belong on every hilltop you can see. And yes, I'm a ham, and I deal with emergency services and the local sheriff's office.