Homeowners See Threat on the Horizon From Antennas : Environment: Groups want restrictions on cellular phone companies’ aerials, which some view as ugly or a health danger.
Homeowner generals, who in their time have battled everything from liquor stores to satellite dishes, have identified what they say is the newest threat to their property values--cellular telephone antennas.
Due to a swell in the number of wireless users, applications by cellular phone companies for antenna permits have been on the upswing. In the first four months of this year, applications for antennas in the San Fernando Valley poured in at about one a week.
Homeowners and cellular companies clashed May 23, when AirTouch Cellular asked a Los Angeles City Council committee to overrule zoning officials who had denied the company’s request for an antenna complex in Sherman Oaks. Committee members said they were leaning against the request.
Residents say they don’t trust the cellular companies, who they say have been less than straightforward about their antenna plans. The California Public Utilities Commission seems to agree with them.
After an investigation, the commission in February, 1994, accused Los Angeles Cellular Telephone Co., one of the two cellular companies serving the Los Angeles area, of intentionally building cellular facilities without state authorization. In addition, it alleged that the company systematically tried to “avoid obtaining local permits or approvals in order to expedite construction” of its cellular facilities.
The commission investigated about 160 L.A. Cellular facilities in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties and found some sort of violation in most of them.
L.A. Cellular acknowledged that in some cases it began building cellular facilities without state authorization, but said that it did so unintentionally. The company said it has made good faith efforts to comply with the commission’s policies and that it has generally done so.
L.A. Cellular paid the commission about $5 million to settle two separate investigations but did not admit any wrongdoing. Two months ago, the company ran a newspaper ad apologizing “for any inconvenience its failure to comply fully may have caused the public authorities, L.A. Cellular’s subscribers, and the public in general.”
“There were some minor violations that we believe occurred,” said L.A. Cellular spokesman Steve Crosby. “We have changed our practices, and now we’re looking at it on a ‘go forward’ basis.”
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The state panel is also investigating every other cellular company in the state, including Los Angeles’ other company, AirTouch, for possible violations. “My understanding is that our cell sites are in compliance, even those built before the implementation” of the commission’s rule that cellular companies seek state approval before starting construction, AirTouch spokeswoman Melissa May said.
Overall, the commission has found more than 500 violations by cellular phone companies, according to public utilities investigator Kent Wheatland.
Some companies have illegally erected antennas without building permits and began using them without a certificate of occupancy, which is also illegal. Others lied to the commission, Wheatland contended, about having obtained local permits when they had not. Still others went ahead and built antennas without bothering to get state permission.
Of the approximately 160 antenna sites scrutinized in the L.A. Cellular investigation, 10 to 15 were in the San Fernando Valley, Wheatland estimated. Most of those sites--which were located in communities ranging from Northridge to Sherman Oaks to Agoura Hills--involved a failure to properly obtain state authorization.
Not only are cellular companies coming under fire for constructing antennas without permits, they are taking heat for the ones they are requesting through the proper channels.
Some community leaders worry that antennas may be sending out harmful electromagnetic waves. Others complain about the industrial aesthetics of antennas mounted on poles 30 to 90 feet high.
“They are an ugly intrusion into the neighborhoods, much like the proliferation of billboards,” said Richard Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.
Homeowner groups are calling on the city to come up with tough restrictions on where antennas can be located and how they must be disguised, much as the city imposed restrictions on satellite dishes in the 1980s.
They are getting qualified support from an unlikely place--the cellular companies themselves. But city zoning officials say a policy may be difficult to come up with, given the unique characteristics of each antenna proposal.
For John Michaels, a Sunland resident, even one antenna was too many. When L.A. Cellular announced plans to erect a 60-foot transmitter tower up the hill from Michaels’ rustic hillside neighborhood, he and neighbors fought back.
For two years, they flocked to hearings, launched appeals, even raised a weather balloon to show their councilman how obnoxious the antenna would be. Finally, this spring, the homeowners, L.A. Cellular and Councilman Joel Wachs worked out an agreement under which the company would build the antenna in a supermarket parking lot.
But other homeowner-industry skirmishes have not ended so harmoniously. Other communities that have locked horns over antennas in the past two years include Northridge, Encino, Sherman Oaks, Van Nuys and Valley Village.
Cellular phone companies say the new antennas are needed to fill in gaps in their antenna network. The popularity of cellular phones has increased the burden on existing transmitters, making more antennas necessary.
For example, the number of antenna applications filed in the city increased from four in 1986 to 54 in 1990. From 1991 to 1994, the number held at about 50 per year. But in the first 18 weeks of this year, 30 applications were filed citywide, 16 of them in the Valley.
Debate is expected to heat up in the Valley in next few months, when the city Planning Commission is expected to consider exempting antennas from the Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan, a planning guide that would have placed height limits on the antennas. The proposed exemptions would make it easier for cellular companies to put them up.
Currently, city policies require that cellular companies go through a zoning permit process, which entails at least one public hearing for every antenna that they want to build in a residential or commercial area. The companies are allowed to put antennas in industrial areas without special permission. There are no requirements that antennas be hidden or landscaped.
Concern about the proliferation of antennas has spread to city leaders. Hal Bernson and Laura Chick, members of the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee, said recently that they would like cellular companies to inform the city of their long-term plans for where and how many antennas they will need.
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The cellular companies “need to sit down with the Planning Department and the zoning department and come up with a game plan, define what are good areas for antennas, and think about pooling of sites,” said Bernson.
Cellular phone antennas can come in a variety of heights and shapes, including spikes, panels and dishes. They are most commonly found on the tops of tall buildings, but the most controversial ones have been on tall poles.
Homeowners suggested a number of restrictions for antennas. Among them: height and location limits, a ban on antennas in residential areas, even requiring that phone companies double up on the same pole whenever possible.
Neil Fitzpatrick, director of external affairs for AirTouch, said his company could live with several restrictions, such as planting “lacy trees like eucalyptus” around antenna poles, setting rooftop spikes back from the roof’s edge and painting antennas to match the color of the building.
The great disparity among antenna projects, however, makes drafting guidelines difficult at best. For this reason, Los Angeles zoning officials take the view that the current system works pretty well.
“Personally, I don’t see a problem at the moment,” said Associate Zoning Administrator Dan Green. “But if there were any pressure to change things, I would be happy to participate in any discussion to work to that end.”
Homeowners are concerned not only about the ugliness of antennas, they are worried about potential health hazards. But Green said he and other zoning officials have reviewed information on antennas and found little that concern them.
“We don’t know of any reputable universities or think tanks or agencies that point to the likelihood of any health risk,” Green said.
But even if antennas are safe, they’re still ugly and should be restricted, homeowners say. Cellular companies also continue to hope for a streamlined permitting process.
Drafting a sensible policy on antennas in Los Angeles, said AirTouch’s Fitzpatrick, could serve as a valuable model. For Los Angeles to come up with a thoughtful policy on antennas, he said, “would be helpful to other jurisdictions, so they don’t always have to reinvent the wheel.”
