Fighting back

IT TOOK TWO teacher-farmers from Vermont to get Washington's attention.

In May 1997, Janet Newton was checking on the sugar maple trees on her farm, in Cabot, Vermont. Several trees had nails in them. Survey markers were scattered about. Upon further investigation, Newton learned that her neighbor had agreed to let a cell-phone company install an antenna on his property.

Newton and her husband, Dale Newton, mobilized their neighbors and were able to get the application dismissed. They helped local officials draft a bylaw regulating cell-phone antennas. More significant, they formed the EMR Network (EMFs are sometimes referred to as electromagnetic radiation, or EMR), a fledgling national organization to educate people about the potential danger of EMFs and to help communities fight back. The network's Web site, www.emrnetwork.org, is a good introduction to the issue, and it includes links to a number of other organizations as well.

The Newtons' activism certainly mobilized the Vermont congressional delegation. The senators -- Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, and Jim Jeffords, a Republican -- are sponsoring legislation to repeal a provision of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that prohibits local officials from banning cell and PCS antennas on environmental grounds. The bill would also encourage the development of alternative wireless communications, such as satellite transmission and a new technology called "PCS over cable," which makes use of existing cable-television lines. Vermont's House member, Representative Bernie Sanders, an independent socialist, is sponsoring a bill similar to the Jeffords-Leahy legislation. (Representative Charles Bass, a New Hampshire Republican, is sponsoring a separate bill that would not repeal the 1996 provision, but would nevertheless strengthen the hand of local officials.)

Unfortunately, any such legislative solution may come too late. According to the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA), a trade group representing the $29.6 billion industry, approximately half of the 100,000 antennas that will be needed for a national wireless network are already in place. And the vast majority of the remaining half are likely to be installed in places where there are already antennas -- on transmission towers, as in Newton Upper Falls, or in church steeples, on signs, or on the sides of buildings. Within the industry, this phenomenon is known as "co-location."

"While there are still more antennas to go up, we may have reached something of a peak in terms of the number of towers that are being built. There is a lot more sharing going on," says Tim Ayers, a spokesman for CTIA, who estimates that some 80 percent of new antennas are installed on existing structures. He also defends the 1996 provision diluting the power of local zoning officials by saying that a national wireless network could not have been built if each of the country's 30,000 separate zoning authorities had been given free rein.

Responds Ed Barron, an aide to Senator Leahy: "Local governments and states should have, as our bill provides, the ability to exercise normal police power, which covers health and safety issues."

For Janet Newton, the debate over cell-phone antennas cost her the friendship of her next-door neighbors, but it has opened her eyes to the growing body of scientific evidence suggesting that EMFs are harmful. She's also in contact with dozens of grassroots organizations across the country. "We're just beginning to get a handle on how many are out there," she says.

---

Back to "Waves of doubt"

---