INSIDE

Threat forces public meeting

By Meg Olson

Cellular telephone tower opponent John Hammell may have succeeded with threats where he failed with entreaties.
Parks board member Shelley Damewood resigned, citing fear of litigation, and the board grudgingly scheduled a public meeting on the proposal.

“I’ve proven my ability to cause legal difficulty for the parks board,” Hammell announced at the December 7 meeting of the Point Roberts Parks and Recreation District. “Everyone on the parks board will be sued if this tower is built. As an electro-sensitive person my back is to the wall. This board should have asked us first if we thought it was a good idea and we were never given a chance.”

Hammell left following his remarks but several other audience members spoke in opposition to a proposed lease of parks district land to Verizon Wireless. The company intends to build a 200-foot lattice tower with cellular telephone transmission antennas on the site of the old landfill adjacent to the water district storage tank behind Baker Field.

Craig Jacks brought up a litany of reasons parks district commissioners should turn down the deal. “We’re doing the gestalt of it – the eyesore, the birds, the property values,” he said. He singled out the possible health effects of radio frequency radiation from the facility, especially given its location near the school. “How can you be sure it’s not deleterious when the doctors are still fighting about it?” he said.

Jacks also brought up the specter of litigation, likening the group Point Roberts Alliance for Sound Public Health Policy, which formed to oppose the tower, to the Resource Management Group, which opposed a development at Lily Point in the 1980s. “We incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills for the people who wanted to develop Lily Point and our tactics are similar here,” he said.

Parks district commissioner Shelly Damewood announced her resignation when the board’s discussion turned to the tower. “This is a problem for me,” she said. “It’s been pointed out if we don’t handle this carefully we will be sued.” Despite the district commissioners’ board insurance coverage, Damewood said she was fearful. “You talk about the fear factor. Someone stands up and says ‘do what we want or we’ll make your life miserable’,” she said.

Damewood said the condition on which she would stay on the board, at least temporarily was a special public meeting to gather more community input of the proposal. “It’s clear to me we have to have a public meeting on this before we move forward,” she said. “That would be the cautious way to proceed.” Project opponents have repeatedly asked for that public forum but the board has so far limited public testimony to their monthly meetings.

“I think we have handled this in a fair and thorough manner,” said board member Linda Hughes. “We as a board have spent countless hours – read every report or email, watched every video submitted to us. I’m not convinced another public meeting will add anything more to the pot of information I’m cooking in.” Damewood agreed, saying the only reason she wanted to hold the public forum was the threat of litigation.
“I don’t think it’s necessary but if you’ll stay on I’ll support it,” said board member Fred DeHaan. There was unanimous support for a motion to schedule a January 3 public hearing on the tower proposal at 7 p.m. at the community center.

Parks board president Irene Waters said Andy King, from the land use consulting firm The Meridian Group representing Verizon, had agreed to attend if they held a public hearing.

The board will also be presenting the results of a site review by ADCOMM Engineering. The site analysis predicts the maximum level of radio-frequency radiation at ground level 133 feet from the facility, in the direction the antenna array will be pointed, would be 0.011 percent of the maximum permissible exposure levels established by the Federal Communications Commission. At the school, located in the opposite direction, levels would be “significantly reduced.” Overall, the report concludes that “levels at locations which the public frequent are much less than the limits called for by the FCC.”

Tower opponents have stated the maximum exposure levels set by the federal government are inadequate.