County Letter

Bellow is a copy of my letter to the Snohomish County Planning Department.

To whom it may concern:

I am a property owner in the Mount Forest area of Snohomish County who has lived here for over 12 years. My wife and I have spent much of our time here making our property our personal piece of paradise. We enjoy the nature on our property and have always been careful to protect the environment.

When we were approached by the SBA cell tower company and asked if we wanted “free money” for leasing our property for a cell tower, we were of course interested in more information. We were given a sample lease agreement and told they would get us some numbers on power. “Less than a microwave oven” and “way below the national limit” they said. I kept asking for specific numbers on power and when they finally provided the numbers on power they said 57 dBm EIRP. Since I am not an RF engineer, I had to look up the conversion of this value to get a power level in watts that had some meaning. The power level turned out to be 500 watts! As I continued to do some research, I found that the power level they provided was for one provider, not the four they were talking about in the lease. When they said less than a microwave oven, they meant with the door open and turned on!

As my research continued, I found that the national limit of 1mW/cm2 was set only for thermal effects. This level was set by the FCC, who by their own admission is not qualified to rule on limits for human health. The FCC defers to the EPA and FDA for limits on biological effects. To this date, no biological experiments have been done on humans to verify a safe limit.

Other countries (Canada, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia and Russia) used to have the same 1mW/cm2 limit but have since changed their limits to 100 or 1000 times more strict after realizing that there were serious health effects for long term exposure to low levels of microwave radiation. Doctors Lai and Sieng at the University of Washington have showed some of these experiments on animals and human blood. They show single and double DNA strand breaks, which cause cancer and cell mutation. They published their results at the international conference on cell tower siting in Salzburg Germany with 100’s of other scientists.

To make things worse, the current installations are not being monitored to learn from them. There should be a database linking the population’s health and existing cell tower sites.

The Telecommunications Act is a tool that cell company lawyers are using to force local governments to ignore health issues. This is a misinterpretation of the act. At hearings many lawyers are intentionally misquoting the act in their favor. It does not say Operation or Human Health (humans are much more than just the environment).

Exact Quote of the paragraph from the TCA of 1996

The role of government is to protect the people and work for the people, not industry. It has been shown from animal studies, that there is reason for concern; there have been no tests on humans to show it is safe. Industry should not be able to conduct this unmonitored human radiation experiment against peoples will. There are plenty of ways to responsibly place cellular communications towers where they will serve the community and not harm its residents. The burden is not on the neighboring landowners to prove it is affecting their health. Many areas of the US are putting restrictions on how close cell towers can be to schools showing the awareness and reason for concern.

The “non-ionizing electromagnetic exposure” document submitted with the permit application does not account for the topography, which has a 30-foot elevation gain to the east of the tower. It also ignores the biological hazards of electromagnetic radiation and only discusses the thermal effects. To completely ignore these biological effects is irresponsible.

I would think that human health concerns would be enough to deny a permit. These are not just superstitious fears, but backed with scientific data. The wireless industry and the government health agencies have had plenty of time to prove their case and do experiments, but they haven’t. They just continue with business as usual and claim we can’t talk about these issues. Who is running this country, the people or big business?

I continue to stress that cellular tower siting needs to be done in a responsible way. Snohomish County currently does not have any regulations other than the building code to regulate tower placement. Many other counties have adopted special setback requirements for communications towers. This proposed tower is less than one mile from the King County line. The current proposal would not be allowed in King County.

This irresponsibility is also clear in the Environmental Checklist that they are required to write for each proposed tower. There are several gross misrepresentations in this document that shows they clearly did not do their homework. First, they claim the site is on a mass transit bus line. There is no bus route within miles of the site. Second, they claim the responding environmental agency is Little Bear Creek Protective Association. This association is located in King County and not even close to the area (completely different watershed). Third, they grossly misrepresented the wildlife in the area. They say there are no birds and only squirrels and domestic pets in the area. Any one who has spent more than 5 minutes at the proposed location should know that is not true and it is an insult to think that they expect anyone to believe that. I am not going to go into detail on what wildlife is here, because it is their job to submit an accurate report. I will only state that there are many protected and endangered species in the area. I think such blatant errors in the permit submittal is reason enough for denial of the permit. This assessment is required by the federal government to decide if an environmental impact study needs to be done. When I spoke to the county planner about the inaccuracies in the Environmental Checklist, he told me that the errors didn’t matter and that it was a form used for other special use permits. As explained in WAC 197–11–330 (3i & ii) an EIS is necessary if wetlands or endangered/threatened species may be at risk. An EIS is necessary for this location.

Another example of irresponsibility in this tower siting is the location. Many counties have a setback from the property boundary of equal to or 1.5 times the height of the tower. Some counties have setbacks of 5 times the tower height for towers with guy wires. Snohomish County currently does not have any setback requirements other than the 50 feet for structures of a certain height. This setback does several things. It takes the special use and contains it more on the landowner’s property than the neighbors, and it allows for a greater buffer area around the tower. Second, it contains the danger of a tower falling to the leasing property. As this permit is applied for, the tower location is pushed as far into the corner of the property as possible forcing areas of neighboring properties to its view, danger, emissions and noise from HVAC equipment. There are no substantial evergreen trees on the property to hide the tower from adjacent properties. Other counties also have requirements that cell sites be located on commercial property before resorting to residential properties. They also have stricter rules for residential sites over commercial sites.

The site placement is also in an area that already has Cingular telephone service (only one signal bar higher was possible). There is no need or desire for more service in the area. Due to the elevation changes on the surrounding properties, a 150 foot high tower will not provide any service to any customers to the east of the tower (except the immediate properties surrounding the tower who will be exposed to these direct beams of microwave energy against their will). The properties to the west consist of mainly wetlands and wildlife, not the high-density neighborhoods like they would lead you to believe in their Environmental Checklist. Cingular is claiming that this is the optimum location for such a tower yet half their potential service area is rendered useless by the topography. The highest density of population in the surrounding several miles is hidden by the hill. Without a need for service to the east of the tower location, the permit should be limited to only allow antennas to the west to avoid unnecessary exposure to residents living on the east side of the tower. From viewing the coverage maps, co-locating with other providers on the existing power transmission line towers would provide better service than this tower without the need to add a new tower to a property with wetlands.

More evidence of irresponsibility is the matter of trespassing for this permit. This is even shown on the site plan that was submitted by the applicant. The Bench Mark rebar and cap were driven into a point at least 15 feet onto my property. Many of trails used for access along the property boundary are also on my property (these trails did not exist before the applicant moved in two years ago). I can’t believe that they would do this or think that I was okay with it. I am currently considering filing trespassing charges.

I was curious how many cell sites there were within a 5-mile radius (to the west only) of my property (and the proposed tower). I flew over and found 14 existing tower sites. Two of these were just over a mile away. In the center of this ring of tower sites were two commercial properties; the Natural Gas Pumping Station and the Verizon equipment lot on Echo Lake Road. I believe that both of these locations should have been considered before resorting to residential properties. They are both on higher ground and they are further from any other existing sites, thus being better locations that the one being considered in this application.

Many zoning laws for other counties require that commercial properties be used before residential. Zoning is supposed to provide order and keep similar uses together. This allows people to move to an area and know what type of land use they should expect from the neighboring properties in the near future. I looked at several properties when I was searching for my land and I could have paid half the price for land under a power line. I chose to spend more money and live on land without power line towers. The same goes for cellular phone towers, garbage dumps and even gas line easements. We found our piece of paradise and have been working hard to build our dream property over the past 12 years. Now to have a proposed cell tower within 50 feet of my property line by someone who hasn’t even lived here 2 years is ludicrous. We were offered money to have a tower on our property and decided that it wasn’t worth it for us no matter how much they were paying. Having it on our property would have been healthier for us than the current site, but we still didn’t want it. Our other neighbors had similar feelings and we all decided that this was not what we moved here for.

The property the proposed tower would be placed on does not have any significant trees to hide the tower. I personally believe that the tower location should be considered wetlands and the county already recognizes part of the property as wetlands. In fact, the buffer area is within feet of the lease area. Many tower sites contain backup batteries with sulphuric acid that can leach into the wetland area. The Environmental Checklist indicates a total impervious surface for this site at an additional area of 4,600 sq-ft.. If you add the existing house and parking area, it is over 10,000 sq-ft.. A proposed future shop will add even more impervious surface to the property. When I measure from the site map, I measure the additional impervious surface as a 12’ wide road of 360’ length. This totals 4,320 sq-ft for just the road (they indicate 968 sq-ft). The lease area is 40’ X 40’ adding another 1600 sq-ft for a total of 5,920 sq-ft. As a minimum an engineered drainage plan should be done and installed to protect the wetlands on the property and adjacent properties (required for more than 5,000 sq-ft). I don’t believe that this should be treated separately from the house and existing driveway. To do so would mean that someone could pave their whole property without any drainage plan as long as they did it in small pieces one at a time.

There is an easy solution to all of this. The second court of appeals in Sprint vs. Willoth (Ontario, NY) is quoted below. There are three key points made by this court that apply here.

“A local government may reject an application for construction of a wireless service facility in an under-served area without thereby prohibiting personal wireless services if the service gap can be closed by less intrusive means.”

This illustrates the point that there are many ways to provide cellular services. Just because a cellular company applies for a permit to install a tower doesn’t mean that it is the only solution. It also does not mean that it is the best way to provide services. They should not be approved without regard to residents of the community.

“Furthermore, once an area is sufficiently serviced by a wireless service provider, the right to deny applications becomes broader: State and local governments may deny subsequent applications without thereby violating subsection B(i)(II). The right to deny applications will still be tempered by subsection B(i)(I), which prohibits unreasonable discrimination. However, it is not unreasonably discriminatory to deny a subsequent application for a cell site that is substantially more intrusive than existing cell sites by virtue of its structure, placement or cumulative impact. We hold only that the Act's ban on prohibiting personal wireless services precludes denying an application for a facility that is the least intrusive means for closing a significant gap in a remote user's ability to reach a cell site that provides access to land-lines.”

The above paragraph allows local governments to deny permits for towers that are more intrusive than other cell sites in the area. The only other cell sites in the permit area today are mounted on power line towers. This would be the first monopole tower to be constructed in the area and would set a precedent for this area. Pole mounted boxes are a less intrusive alternative that will fill the need, provide better service without any complaints from neighbors about health, property values or aesthetics. Pole mounted boxes are better for the community and we should not allow this precedent to be set.

“Moreover, mandating approval of all wireless facilities would act as a disincentive for wireless service providers to develop and deploy new technology that will provide better transmission and reception with less intrusive towers, effectively undermining the TCA's goal of increased innovation.”

This final paragraph (above) illustrates why the Telecommunications Act encourages this new technology. It is a better choice for everyone. It may impact the cellular companies ability to make a buck or make their job a little harder, but the communities health, happiness and property values are more important than industries desire to make a buck. If the cellular companies can find land where they have enough of a buffer so the effect on the neighbors is negligible, then they are welcome to install a tower of their choosing. This permit application is definitely not one of those and we do not want our homes impacted in this way.

As I understand it, a hearing is required to do a ‘sanity check’ on the permit process. Without specific zoning codes to follow, like many other counties have already adopted, it is up to the hearing examiner to impose these common sense restrictions on industry to allow residents and utilities to co-exist.

In summary, I fear for my health, the health of my children and the health of the environment due to an irresponsibly placed cell tower. I am concerned about the decrease of my property values. No person I know would pay the same amount for land next to a cell tower as land elsewhere and I intend to prove this at the hearing. I am appalled that the applicants would submit an Environmental Checklist with so many errors in it and have the planner not even care that there were so many inaccuracies. I am shocked that my county does not have better zoning laws to control the placement of towers in a responsible way. I fail to understand why Cingular wants to put a new tower where it is not needed and unnecessarily expose residents to microwave radiation for no reason. I am enraged at the fact that the planning department does not think a drainage plan is needed when they forced a neighboring house without wetlands on their property to have one just for their driveway. Finally, I have presented less intrusive options (pole top boxes or transmission line towers) that will satisfy the requirements of the Telecommunications Act, provide service and preserve the quality of life in the area.

With the new technology that is available, placing these towers in a residential neighborhood is the ultimate in injustice. The landowner gets paid for lowering his neighbor’s quality of life. This permit must be denied for the good of the people of Snohomish County.

My Letter to the County