Ugly Debates Over Cellular Antennas
See that turret on the side of the inn? You’d be surprised what’s inside. That antique light pole on the side of the road? There’s one in there, too. And that lovely rock outcropping you pass during a serene drive in the forest might just be hiding one.
The cell phone industry calls them “stealth sites,” and they are cropping up all over the country as the wireless communication industry finds increasingly clever ways to disguise ugly cell towers. Hidden inside everything from fake ranger stations, church steeples, windmills and even faux trees are antennas that enable cell phone users to talk as they zip along the highway.
But even stealth hasn’t been enough to convert this postcard-ready community into a static-free zone. The city and county face a backlog of more than 100 antenna applications, and more are expected as cell carriers try to close the gaps in their coverage. Now, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors is being asked to impose a moratorium on new applications, which would further complicate the situation.
Some telecom companies complain about the slow application process. “The coverage for the community and area is woefully inadequate,” said Peter Maushardt, site development manager for Verizon Wireless.
“We’re making any and all attempts to construct facilities that meet requirements, whether through stealth equipment or not. But the county has been very slow in processing applications.”
Maushardt said it can take more than a year for each application.
Bureaucrats are sympathetic to the companies, some of whom are facing government deadlines to get their federally licensed sites up. But sympathy only goes so far. This is Santa Barbara, after all.
“One of the biggest complaints we get is, ‘We’ve done it this way in other jurisdictions,’ ” said Adam Baughman, a county planner. “We say, ‘This is Santa Barbara.’ ”
One of the things troubling local decision makers is uncertainty about how many antennas they will have to accept, hidden or not. Six carriers are asking for sites.
“There is no ceiling,” Baughman said.
The city of Santa Barbara requires that sites have no “visual impacts” at all, said Jaime Limon, a senior planner. Antennas have been hidden inside false chimneys, a fake antique light pole, and a turret on the old Montecito Inn. There are applications for phony rock outcroppings along semirural Highway 154.
Downtown buildings are especially effective antenna sites. When a building allows one carrier to install an antenna, a kind of feeding frenzy develops as other companies move in. “The joke has been we have towers looking for buildings,” said Limon.
Because each site covers a limited area ranging from a block to several miles, depending on obstacles and capacity, blind spots remain. Limon said there is a backlog in the city of 28 more applications, but the industry is running out of ways to hide the antennas. One possibility would allow companies to put in a conventional tower in exchange for removing a pole somewhere else.
“This is all going to be debated,” said Limon. But nobody is willing to compromise aesthetics for expediency. “We tried to go to the Planning Commission last month and ask what they want. They said, ‘We want beautiful.’ ”
Thinly veiled by the debate over aesthetics is a concern over the health effects of radio frequency waves. The reason it’s not openly discussed is that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 said a cell tower application cannot be refused over fears that emissions could cause cancer. That is because even skeptics admit there is no proof that such emissions cause cancer. Carriers insist the low-level emissions are safe.
That hasn’t stopped the Carpinteria-Summerland Fire Protection District from filing suit against Nextel of California, claiming cell towers threaten the health of firefighters. Firefighters have complained of headaches, sleeplessness and lethargy since cell antennas were installed.
“It is not yet conclusive that you can get cancer from low-intensity radio frequency [emissions]. However, we have many studies showing we should be very careful,” said Cindy Sage, an environmental consultant.
Demonstrating the ubiquitous nature of the emissions, she walked down a street in Montecito with a hand-held alarm that sounded at regular intervals as it picked up frequencies.
The need for stealth designs has created a cottage industry of companies making fake trees, rocks and other things. Mike Reineck, the vice president of manufacturing for Stealth Network Technologies in South Carolina, said his company just finished a mock ranger station in St. Louis that has four legs and resembles a lookout tower. His company also did a fake silo, 110 feet tall and 16 feet in diameter, in Connecticut.
“People want service, but they also want the equipment to be magically invisible,” said Audrey Schaefer, a spokeswoman for Nextel Wireless. “It can be a challenge.”
More than a challenge, said Stephanie Walsh of Sprint PCS: “It’s a Catch-22.”
“We want to very much play by the rules,” said Steve Burnett, vice president of sales and marketing for Alpine PCS. “We’ve had some concerns and frustrations regarding [Santa Barbara] County. They’ve taken significantly longer than the norm” to approve new towers.
Mike Brown, the county administrator, notes that the kinds of problems and delays that have cropped up in Santa Barbara have occurred in other places, “particularly in communities highly oriented toward quality of life. This entire county falls into that category.”
The board of supervisors will take up a request for a moratorium on Aug. 28, to allow county planners to catch up with the backlog and rewrite portions of the local ordinance governing cell towers.
Brown understands the frustration of the companies. “They are coming up on deadlines, so there’s a rush to make it,” he said. “We’re trying to figure out a way to ferret through it.”
But don’t expect Santa Barbara to legalize ugliness.
Limon remembers the surprised industry official who wanted to put up some fake pine trees, which are common elsewhere. “We said no,” said Limon. “We don’t do fake trees in Santa Barbara.”
