Hagman Takes Tower Fight to Tucson

Actor Larry Hagman, who waged war against the National Weather Service when a radar tower was being built near his hometown of Ojai in 1993, tried unsuccessfully Friday to speak at a federal hearing about a similar tower planned near Tucson.

Armed with a 1994 court briefing on the Ojai battle, Hagman, with his wife, Maj, and two other Ojai Valley residents, flew to Tucson to support an injunction against construction of a similar tower in the Empire Mountains 21 miles south of the city.

The Empire Mountain Coalition filed a federal lawsuit March 9 to stop construction of the sphere-topped tower by the National Weather Service until more environmental, health and archeological impacts can be addressed.

Hagman said he wasn’t surprised that a U. S. 9th District Court judge did not allow him or four other witnesses to speak or that the request for an injunction was temporarily denied.

“The Ojai site is not part of this record,” federal attorney David Esposito told the court Friday. The weather service would lose up to $473,000 in contractor fees if a delay of more than two weeks were granted, he said.

Hagman said outside the courtroom that opponents’ claims that surrounding property owners were not given adequate notice and that potential impacts demand more review are the same in Ojai as in Tucson.

Judge John M. Roll gave the weather service and the Empire coalition two additional weeks to enter documents on the Arizona case.

Roll said he must weigh opponents’ health claims against the monetary losses and the wishes of the Federal Aviation Agency to use the tower to study life-threatening weather conditions such as wind shear.

“I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle,” the judge said.

The Hagmans, who said they have spent more than $20,000 fighting the tower constructed near their Sulphur Mountain home in late 1993, were joined by neighbor David Hedman and Upper Ojai Valley author Virginia Loy.

Hagman and Hedman are co-founders of the 400-member Environmental Coalition of Ojai, which is appealing a 9th District ruling made last year against its lawsuit to move the Ojai tower.

Coalition attorney Dale Givner said from his Oxnard office Friday, “If we win our appeal, it could have some affect on that (Tucson) tower as well, because the issues of health impacts from radiation are the same.”

Givner said the Ojai group is waiting for a court panel to set the date for oral arguments to begin on their appeal.