GUILDERLAND — A unanimous decision by the town’s zoning board will allow Nextel Partners, Inc., to install more cellular telephone antennas on the Westmere water tank.
The tower is already home to three other cell-phone providers, and Nextel’s application for a special-use permit to install more will allow the company to "penetrate" area malls like Crossgates and the 20 Mall. The company’s representatives say recent customer complaints of little or no reception in such places is the reason for the new antennas.

Not everyone in town is happy about having more cell-phone coverage for the area.
Liesse Mohr, who lives near the water tower on Gipp Road, warned the zoning board about succumbing to business pressures driven by "consumer demand." She suggested that the town adopt a comprehensive town-wide plan to monitor and prevent saturation of cell-phone antennas that produce controversial radio-frequency radiation.

Mohr, who has facilitated town discussions in the past and founded the local chapter of Study Circles, said she believes the concentration of cell towers in one area could be a potential health risk and lead to possible property depreciation.
Chairman Peter Barber disagreed, saying that, if an applicant meets the Federal Communication Commission’s guideline, "It’s out of our hands."
"It’s not our role to step into these matters," Barber said. "If it meets the FCC guidelines"the law is the law. They are what they are."

Supervisor Kenneth Runion is backing up Barber’s assertion.
"I think everyone’s hands are tied because the FCC controls those issues," Runion told The Enterprise this week. "I haven’t really heard about the issue until recently. A number of studies have been conducted. The FCC has concluded that there is no health effect."

Mohr doesn’t see it that way. She said the zoning board would have the power to weigh in if the town adopted a comprehensive plan and monitored the levels of radio frequency emissions in specific areas.

Barber said that the FCC regulations mostly address workers’ health rather than residential health concerns.
"Most of these guidelines are for people working right up against them and are most at risk from exposure," he said of radio frequency guidelines for cell-phone antennas. "We did a worset-case scenario"It’s still less than 1-percent of the threshold."

Mohr, however, contended that Nextel’s calculations for low-frequency radio frequency exposure were only based on 30 minute exposure limits as opposed to 24-hour exposure.
Barber told Mohr that he did not want to "debate the science" of the findings.

The town-designated engineer, Delaware Engineering, sent Ken Johnson to the meeting to reiterate the chairman’s position.
"We reviewed the Nextel submission," Johnson told the zoning board. "It’s basically in conformance with the FCC’s radio frequency exposure guidelines."
Barber referred to the 1996 Telecommunications Act in claiming the issue was out of the zoning board’s jurisdiction. The Telecommunications Act was the first major overhaul in telecommunications law in nearly 62 years and was passed by Congress in order to "let anyone enter any telecommunications business and to let any communications business compete in any market against any other."
However, the act also prohibits "health issues" from being discussed in such zoning applications. Mohr said many of the Guilderland residents, some of whom are scientists, spoke out last October against the Verizon application for more antennas on the Fort Hunter water tower, near Pine Bush Elementary, but that they didn’t know health issues could not validly be discussed.

Last Wednesday’s zoning board meeting was not broadcast as usual on the public access channel, because of a cable malfunction, according to Tom Quaglieri of What’s Happening Productions. But tapes were available and it was re-broadcast later in the week.
Mohr called the timing of the malfunction "interesting."

Case law
"Going back to 1985, there has been no federally-funded research on the effects of the antennas and any of the energy that’s put out as far as radio frequency," Mohr told the board. "Although we can’t talk about health, there are parallel environmental and health concerns that can be used to get the same effect for health issues."

Mohr gave zoning board members an eight-page packet which cited case law in similar situations involving local boards and cell-phone antennas. The papers included studies gathered from a Connecticut conference on radio frequency and local laws as well as e-mail messages from a local scientist.
"We have the right to ask them, in pretty good detail, their need, and their need doesn’t mean they have to have more than 75-percent coverage or anything like that," Mohr said. "I was surprised at the lack of detail in their original application."
She then went on and asked Barber directly, "Do you feel, Peter, that Nextel gave enough information to you that you technically understand that their coverage gap was an issue""
Barber responded, "To the satisfaction of our town engineer, there’s a demonstrated gap. I’ve also noted anecdotally that people have complained about the lack of Nextel service in the Westmere corridor."
Mohr cited a 1999 case, Cellular Telephone Co. v. Zoning Board Adjustment, in which the court, over the vigorous objections of a carrier, held that it is permissible for a local zoning authority to consider "quality" of wireless service, up to a point. The court stated that providers bears the burden of proving a proposed facility is "the least obtrusive means" of filling gaps with a "reasonable level of service."
The court defined "gap," but not "significant gap."
Mohr also noted that the town code dealing with cell-phone towers was from a "previous administration" in 1997 and had not been updated.
"There’s nothing in that code that specifically states antennas have to go on water towers," Mohr said. "In fact, section D-2 it says no towers can be put in residential areas; it’s very specific.
"I would like to see the towers in local business zones, but some local business zones are right next to residential areas, so there are some problems, but there is nothing that says it has to be in residential areas."
The Connecticut conference papers also state that metal objects, like water tanks and roofs, are "conductive materials that can create localized hot spots."

Barber said the height of the water towers make them attractive to telecommunication businesses.
"Generally"in residential areas your universe of structures are relatively low," Barber said. "What we’re doing with this water tower is no different than what we do with Executive Park or any of the other ones."
Barber said the code "suggests" and "prefers" that antennas be placed in business zones, but does not specifically state they have to be placed in those zones.

The 1997 law specifically details cellular telephone tower setbacks, approval processes, documentation of intent, proof of need, long-range plans, and screening, but it does not deal with health regulations.

Income

William West, the town’s Water and Wastewater supervisor, told The Enterprise that Nextel is paying about $2,300 a month for its antennas, which also include Sprint antennas because the two companies have merged. The other providers in town pay about half of that, depending on the time of their contracts because they are single companies, he said.

The roughly $100,000 a year goes directly into the water district’s budget as a revenue, West said.
Mohr told the board that it needs to be proactive and provide radio frequency mapping throughout town, because, without it, "We’re making it too easy for them." She also said that cell-phone providers should foot the bill for the study.
"Other people in the community sympathize with us, but they don’t have this in their backyard," Mohr said.

Mohr listed for the board several locations near radio-frequency emitting antennas, including: her home, 475 feet from the Westmere tower; the Pine Bush Elementary School, 500 feet from the Fort Hunter tower; a neighbor, 350 feet from the Westmere water tower; a zoning board member, 1,300 feet from the Westmere tower; and a town board member, 1,100 from Stuyvesant Plaza.
"You’re limiting my ability to sell my house," Mohr told the board about the close proximity of a water tower with four cell-phone provider’s antennas. She said she did not feel "ethically comfortable" selling her house to a family with a lot of kids.
"The RF mapping would alleviate a lot of these concerns," she said.

Barber thanked Mohr for work on the matter before he called for a vote on Nextel’s special-use permit.
"I would like to give special attention to all of the time and hard work Liesse Mohr put into researching this"I think she deserves credit," Barber said, as he thanked her for this particular case as well the others she has worked on in the past.

However, Barber said he could not deny the application.
"We are largely restricted on what we can review," he said. "If you meet the FCC regulations, then local boards cannot review further."

One board member did speak out before voting in favor of the application.
"There are residents in our town who may not hold with the assurances of the federal government ‘that all is well’ and would like to have some say," said board member Charles Klaer. "Some citizens have not been persuaded. It’s their personal feelings versus the government’s assurance."