Point Reyes Light - May 5, 2005
Cellular antenna for Point Reyes Station planned
By Jacob Resneck
In an effort to bring its cellular phone service to Tomales Bay communities, Verizon Wireless is negotiating with a rancher to install a single antenna on property just north of Point Reyes Station.
"We’re looking to put in a monopole and a generator in that area because basically Verizon Wireless customers cannot get service to Point Reyes," spokeswoman Barbara Curl at Verizon’s regional headquarters in Walnut Creek told The Light. "And I understand that you get several million visitors out there."
While the company has yet to submit its formal application to county planners, Sonoma-based freelance "wireless site acquisition" consultant Peter Hilliard made a presentation to the Point Reyes Station Village Assocation at its April 14 meeting.
Verizon wants to be ‘good neighbors’
"We did not have to go to the village group," Curl said. "But we wanted to be good neighbors."
Chairwoman of the village association’s design committee Wiebke Buxbaum, said that the association will defer on voicing its support or opposition to the proposal until after it sees the final plans.
"The design committee is still considering it, and in the meantime people should be aware of this proposal." she said. "We wanted this whole issue to percolate through the community."
Hilliard who told The Light he had been asked by Verizon to defer questions to their public relations department, is negotiating with Carol Horick, owner of the potential antenna-site. To date, he said he has has not submitted a formal application to county planners.
Horick told The Light that she was annoyed at all of the outside concern of what she does with her own property.
"I like my privacy and I get mad when people tell me what I should do with my own land," she said.
Already one neighbor, Betty Wheelwright, has contacted The Light voicing her concerns about the proposal.
"I don’t think it’s an appropriate location," she said. "I don’t have any confidence that what we’re being told today will look anything like this 10 years down the road. These kinds of things can be on a long contract and the property owner can lose a lot of control – cellphone companies have so much power."
Curl said that Verizon would install landscaping to minimize the antenna’s visual impact and that they planned to submit their proposal to county planners once the lease agreement and final drawings are wrapped up.
The length of the lease, Curl said, has not been hammered out. With the terms of the lease not finalized, "anything we share with you would be premature," she said.
‘No bad health effects’ from antennas, says Verizon
Responding to questions about adverse-health effects, Curl said, "in all of the studies I’ve read there’s no evidence of health effects from these types of antennas."
In response to a question of the wattage output of the transmitter, Curl responded in an email:
"Regarding your question about [electro-magnetic fields] generated by the cellular equipment: As part of the application process for a specific structure, Marin County requires that an independent third party engineering firm provide a report to the planning dept. that states the structure is well below [American National Standards Institute] standards. Bottom line is that Marin County has a process defined to which, of course, Verizon Wireless will follow."
Deputy Director of Planning Services Brian Crawford told The Light while federal regulations prevent local agencies from blocking projects that meet federal standards on the grounds of health risks alone, planners are far from impotent in the permitting process.
"Local agencies are prevented from appealing solely on basis of health impacts," he noted. "But that does not prevent appeal for other legitimate reasons such as local government policies, community characteristics, visual impacts, etc."
Wheelwright said she is concerned that the proposed 35-foot antenna and diesel generator for backup during power outages, could be expanded upon by other carriers through a process called collocation. Collocation is the practice of keeping telecommunication antennas in clusters, rather than sporadically placing them around the countryside.
Neighbor worries about expansion
In literature presented to the village association, it stated that Verizon will "cooperate with other telecommunication service provers, which desire to collocate with Verizon. Verizon has master lease agreements with many competing national carriers to help expedite the collocation process."
The county’s telecommunication facility plan adopted in 1998 actually prefers collocation, explained Crawford.
"In an effort to minimize proliferation of antennas throughout the county, collocation is the preferred method," he said. "The county in general wants to minimize the dispersal of these sites to minimize the visual impacts."
But, he added, any collocation around Point Reyes Station would require the applicant go through the entire planning and hearing process from scratch, as it falls into the "coastal zone." Further, he said, any decision by county planners would be appealable to the California Coastal Commission. And even though collocation is spelled out as a preferred method, it’s not a blank check for the industry, he said.
"Even though the county’s telecom plan encourages collocation, there may be some instances in which collocation would result in more impact rather than another stand-alone facility," he said. "Visual impacts and adverse-health impacts are always a consideration."
Antenna better than more houses, argues landowner
Buxbaum noted that the collocation policy makes some people in the community uneasy.
"The pressure to approve [collocation] will be very great once you have an established site," she said. "Collocation is a good thing, that is why we have to be very careful in choosing the site."
Buxbaum noted when looking at the community plan, the Horick property is located in an area zoned residential and could one day be subdivided into half-acre parcels. What may appear to be on the edge of town now, may be in the center of a fairly dense neighborhood, she said.
Horick said she understood people’s concerns, but that they were uninformed.
"People really don’t know what they’re talking about," she laughed. "We had the soil tested [on the property] – it’s all clay, so you can’t build on it. I like my four acres, and I think it’s better to put up a little antenna rather than put a bunch of houses here anyway."