INSIDE

Parks commissioners urged
to reconsider cell tower deal

The Point Roberts Parks and Recreation District commissioners are reviewing the first draft of a proposed agreement to lease land to Verizon Wireless for a cellular transmission tower, but, having used up the district’s available legal funds they may be finalizing the deal without a lawyer.

“We’ve now spent five kayaks,” said commissioner Irene Waters at the November 2 district meeting, “or an entire summer program,” added fellow commissioner Linda Hughes.

Waters announced they had spent $2,200 for the district’s lawyer to review a proposed agreement and negotiate with the Meridian Group, representing Verizon. However, a lengthy request for records from tower opponent John Hammell also needed to be handled through legal counsel, and the price tag was almost $4,000. “We put money in our budget for improvements other than buildings and I moved some of that over to the legal fund,” Waters said.

Waters said commissioners now had a draft option and land lease agreement, and would be reviewing it prior to the next meeting where they would discuss the proposal and how to continue their review. “Normally we’d have the lawyer do it,” Waters said, adding she hoped they could minimize legal costs by reviewing it on their own, perhaps asking Meridian representative Andy King to come and meet with them. “We might have to use the lawyer,” she speculated. “We have a capital fund and I guess we can move money out of there.”

The parks department collects $35,000 annually in tax revenues and operates Baker Field, the community center on Gulf Road, and associated programs.

At the November 2 meeting a packed audience was split roughly down the middle between supporters of the project, in the interest of better cellular telephone reception, and opponents who see it as a blight and a potential health hazard.

Commissioners received one letter in support of leasing the land to Verizon, and heard from five community members who favored the proposal and eight who did not.

“It is a hindrance, living here and working here without cellular phone reception,” said Shannon Tomsen, who said while she doesn’t get clear reception in her home, she does in the middle of the street and people often park on her street to make calls. “We can’t run to the grocery store, we can’t do anything because we can’t forward our land line to our cell phones.” Tomsen pointed to a day in October when a cut fiber optic cable led to almost a full day with no long distance service to the Point, a day when she and others who work from their homes were cut off from their livelihood. “It is unrealistic in this day and age for a community of any size or location to not have cellular telephone service,” she said.

Palo Krnan said he also ran a home business and had no difficulty running it without a cellular telephone. Krnan said he didn’t want to see recreational land used to build the proposed 200-foot lattice communications tower. “I can see no reason why a monster tower should be erected on this land,” he said.

Several parents of children attending the local school were concerned about the possibility of health risks associated with a transmission tower 1 to 2,000 feet from the school. “This child will be going to Point Roberts Primary for the next three years,” said Joseph Aanes, attending the meeting with son Luke. “You owe it to this person to have due diligence. The risk is what you’re placing on him. Take your time to study the situation.”

Pam Oakley also said she opposed the tower because of conflicting data on the safety of radio-frequency radiation carrying cellular telephone signals. “The jury’s out,” she said. “If there’s any ambiguity we should side on safety.”

Ed Lester, who provides clinical laboratory services at the local clinic after selling a chain of five laboratories he founded in California, said the question of cellular telephone safety was clouded by dozens of flawed studies. “For every good study I ran across there were at least a dozen that were suspect,” Lester said. He said that while credible studies from the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute of Health could not establish a link between cancer in children and radio-frequency radiation exposure at levels comparable to those emitted by a communications facility, “we need long-term studies and we don’t have those.”

“We can’t prove a negative,” Lester said. ”We can’t prove for you something won’t happen so you have to balance risks.” The risks associated with a lack of dependable cellular phone service were obvious to clinic staff, Lester said. “If there is a patient with chest pains and they have no phone they could die. If your child is in pain and you have no phone, the child is at risk.”

Commissioner Linda Hughes presented the most recent research she had found, from the American Academy of Pediatrics, outlining recommendations for “precautionary policies in the face of scientific uncertainty.” The October 2006 paper, is based on discussions at a World Health Organization expert workshop in Turkey in 2004. The paper concludes that “physicians could advise parents that their children’s radio frequency exposure can be reduced by restricting the length of calls or by using hands-free devices to keep mobile phones away from the head and body. On the other hand, exposure levels from mobile-phone base stations are extremely low, and therefore precautionary measures do not need to be recommended.”

Steve Wolf encouraged parks commissioners to look for a compromise solution. “Instead of a capacity tower we could go with a monopole that wouldn’t make Verizon a lot of money but would meet local needs,” he said. “I am for better cell reception for a variety of reasons,” he added, but wanted to see radio-frequency radiation, especially near the school, limited to what the local community needed, not “a big capacity tower with lots of users.”

Waters said the commissioners would continue to look at the pros and cons of the proposal and getting answers to questions including the power output of the proposed transmitters and how many would be on the tower. Ultimately, she said, “we would like to see it go through. It is an area that will never be used for parks purposes,” because it is the location of the old landfill.

Commissioner Fred DeHahn also expressed support. “Cellular telephones are a fact of life and we stand to make a third of our budget again if this goes through,” he said. The proposed agreement would pay the parks district $1,000 for a one year option to build on the site, subject to permitting. If the tower is approved by the county, and build, Verizon would lease the land for $12,000 per year.

In language being proposed by the parks district lawyer the district would stand to earn more income if additional users sublet space on the tower, as each would be required to lease ground space from the parks department through a separate agreement to house ancillary equipment.
The three other parks commissioners also voiced support for the tower, though Shelley Damewood’s was qualified. “A monopole is more friendly to the community,” she said. “We should try and make arrangements for that.”

Commissioners will meet again at the community center December 7 and review the proposed agreement.