7/11/2005

S.B. both a model, a mess for cell towers


By SARAH GORDON NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER


   Just watch the foot ­ or car ­ traffic in any busy area, and you will see how attached Santa Barbarans are to their cell phones. But Santa Barbarans have a distinctly less cozy relationship with the towers and antennas that make the devices work.
   While federal law ultimately trumps in matters of where cell phone towers can go, static from local officials and residents ­ fearing both for their health and their property values ­ has stymied installations from Hope Ranch to Tucker’s Grove to Summerland.
   Goleta’s long-running struggle to write a new telecommunications ordinance suggests how hamstrung local governments feel about diluted powers to regulate cell towers in their communities.
   Some see this area’s oversight of new cell towers and antennas as a model. Here, they say, local government balances the companies’ and customers’ needs with the region’s concerns about aesthetics and safety.
   Rob Benson, a partner in the consulting group the Cell Site Landowners Association, said a number of municipalities across the nation are lax compared with places such as Santa Barbara County, which has a telecommunications ordinance that imposes strict aesthetic requirements on cell towers.
   “In most cities, carriers could do a much better job hiding the sites,” he said. “They generally are not pressed to do it.”
   While some commend Santa Barbara for its model regulations, champions of effective cell phone networks say building new towers here can be a nightmare for providers, with homeowners’ associations that fight every major installation, and government officials who do not understand the technology’s requirements. They say all this limits the quality of cell phone coverage in the area.
   “There are several cases in the county where the provider went through a careful permitting process, and the Planning Commission turned it down at the last minute,” said Andy Seybold, a Santa Barbara telecommunications technology consultant who says he is “on a crusade” to make the area more amenable to the construction needs of cell phone networks.
   A stalled proposal to erect an antenna near an existing one in Tucker’s Grove illustrates his fears.
   Verizon officials hoped to hide one dummy tree among the park’s lush forest. County planners embraced their idea, agreeing that a fake tree hiding a cell antenna was preferable to a stark, undisguised pole ­ such as the 50-foot one that Sprint already had installed in the southwest corner of the park.
   Verizon expected the plan to go through. It had worked through many versions of the project with county planners, and staff recommended that the Planning Commission approve the proposal.
   So the company was surprised at a June meeting when the commission rejected the proposal 3-2, with one commissioner changing his mind to a nay vote in the course of the meeting.
   “We’ve gone to great lengths to make sure the site design is the best it can be,” Verizon spokeswoman Heidi Flato said.
   But the Planning Commission had questions.
   “I raised the concern whether Tucker’s Grove was the right place to site antennas,” Commissioner Michael Cooney said. “If you go to the park, doesn’t it seem like you should be sitting under real trees?”
   Peter Mausharder, the manager of real estate for Verizon, said the company is writing a report to explain its need for the project more clearly to the Planning Commission. “We’re judged by the dependability of our network,” he said. “We have to make these things happen.”
LAWS FEDERAL AND LOCAL
   Federal law says local governments must allow cell antennas in every zone, be it residential, recreational or commercial. If the company can prove it needs the site to provide solid coverage, under the law, it can build there, with few exceptions.
   “There is very little that we can do to regulate the cell phone towers, but we do have design review,” Santa Barbara city Planner Bettie Weiss said. “That is an area the feds have not pre-empted.”
   City and county planners say few cell phone antenna projects actually spark debate the way the Tucker’s Grove project did.
   “We do things to nudge the providers into areas that make sense for them,” said Luis Perez, energy specialist for the county’s Planning Division.
   The main technique the county and the city use for nudging is making it far easier for companies to get a permit to add an antenna onto an existing structure than to build a new, freestanding tower. Companies co-locate their antenna with an existing one put up by a rival whenever possible.
   Where there is a tall building, antennas can go on top, often hidden inside of inconspicuous boxes. Francisco Torres, a UCSB dormitory in Isla Vista, hosts antennas from every major provider.
   A nondescript three-story office building on Goleta’s Hollister Avenue is another hot spot. So is Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
   The bell tower at La Cumbre Plaza’s Robinsons-May department store has antennas hidden behind its walls.
   But cell phone providers want to send their signals everywhere, and where there are no tall buildings to assist, they generally must put up a tall, free-standing pole.
   Mr. Perez says the county has gotten better about demanding that cell phone companies hide those antennas.
   For example, an antenna above the county transfer station that slashes into the sky and cuts an ugly silhouette above Goleta would never get built under today’s requirements, Mr. Perez said. The county’s ordinance adopted in 2002 prevents companies from building on a hilltop.
   “We’ve gotten smarter,” he said.
   Instead, a tall pole on a hill must be set so that its top is below the ridge line and painted to match the landscape, he said. Examples stand in the hills by Refugio Road.
   And if poles must sit near a residential zone, the county demands clandestine designs, Mr. Perez said. Witness the flagpoles by the polo fields, the tall poll surrounded by trees at the Sheffield exit in Montecito, the rustic yet odd-looking light standards on Las Positas Drive, the steeple on the Coast Community Church of the Nazarene.
   “The Santa Barbara ordinance provides incentives for providers to come up with creative or good designs,” said Adriane Patnaud, site development manager with Infanext, a company that helps negotiate cell phone sites for carriers.
   Good designs are also vital in convincing owners of private land to lease it to a cell provider.
   Cellular companies meet particular challenges in trying to site towers in residential neighborhoods. Among other worries, residents have concerns about an ugly pole lowering property values.
   A favorite method of locating cell phone towers near residential zones is to hide them in church steeples.
   The Korean United Methodist Church in Isla Vista agreed to have Cingular build a 50-foot steeple on top of the church ­ with an antenna inside ­ in return for a monthly lease.
   Pastor Chiyoung Jeong declined to disclose how much money the congregation gets from the lease, but he said they and the community supported the project.
   “The steeple matches with our church and looks nice,” he said. “There wasn’t a single objection from the congregation or the community.”
   Community objection in Santa Barbara often slows projects, and it has had mixed success in stopping or reversing some of them.
   In the summer of 2003, the Montecito Association took an official stance against a Cingular proposal to affix six panel antennas to the existing Verizon switching station on Santa Angela Lane, less than 100 feet from several houses.
   Association President J’Amy Brown said residents were worried primarily about the potential health effects from the tower, and secondarily about it hurting the value of their homes.
HEALTH EFFECTS
   No scientific research has ever shown a clear relationship between cell towers and human health, and most physical scientists doubt that the low levels of radio frequency radiation the towers emit could pose any risk.
   But some studies suggest that low levels of radio frequency radiation can interfere with biological systems, causing changes in molecular interactions. These studies have caused some scientists to suspect that radiation from cell towers, and cell phones, could influence essential parts of the human body, including the brain, nerves and DNA.
   The World Health Organization and the Environmental Protection Agency have both issued past statements calling for further studies to assess the risk ­ if any ­ from low-level radio-frequency radiation.
   Montecito residents did not want to wait for the results of such studies. But under federal law, local government is not allowed to consider health fears. The 1996 Telecommunications Act says that as long as antennas emit radiation at lower levels than the maximum level allowed by the Federal Communications Commission, local government likewise must deem them safe.
   “As a community, we had concerns. We tried
   to voice those concerns, but it was
   truly out of our hands,” Ms. Brown said.
   Although the project was stalled, with one resident appealing the Montecito Planning Commission’s approval to the county Board of Supervisors, Cingular was ultimately granted a permit for the antennas. However, that same resident is appealing the decision once more, on new grounds, and the antennas have not yet been built.
   Mr. Seybold said this kind of delay is ridiculous and typical of Santa Barbara.
   “If you’re more than six feet away, there’s no danger whatsoever,” he said. “You’ve got to make the health issue go away.”
   It is unlikely it will.
   The Goleta City Council is considering health concerns as it drafts its first telecommunications ordinance.
   “Do we want to require companies to disguise (antennas), or do we want people to know they’re there?” Councilwomen Margaret Connell asked. “Maybe we make them conspicuous so people can avoid them if they want to.”
   The council is also considering requiring clear signs informing people when they are near a cell site.
   In 2000, the Hope Ranch Association voted against allowing residents to lease private property to cell phone providers after neighbors concerned about the safety and the aesthetics of a proposed 60-foot antenna threatened to sue if the project were approved.
   “As much as we wanted to improve the spotty coverage in Hope Ranch, the board decided that if the neighbors were worried that the antenna wasn’t safe, it had to vote against it,” association manager Jim Trebbin said.
   Instead, the association decided to wait for technology to change to suit their neighborhood. Sure enough, a few years later, a company proposed a plan they could live with.
   Northern California-based NextG is installing a series of approximately 30 small antennas on existing utility poles in the upscale neighborhood. Normally, an antenna needs to stand by an accompanying base station full of computer and electronic-signal processing equipment. But the antennas in Hope Ranch will be connected by fiber-optic cables that carry the signals back and forth to one remote base station. NextG is in the process of courting other cell phone providers to use the network when it is finished.
   “Hope Ranch had the type of dilemma that I’m seeing all around the country,” NextG spokeswoman Norene Luker said. “They desperately want to improve coverage, but they don’t like the aesthetics. This technology won’t replace the monopole, but it was ideal for Hope Ranch.”
   In 2001, the Summerland-Carpinteria Fire District sued Nextel, saying the company had erected towers at stations in Carpinteria and Summerland without disclosing their potential health risks. Some firefighters complained that flagpole antennas were located too close, zapping their sleeping quarters and causing lethargy and headaches.
   A federal judge threw out the suit, ruling that federal law barred lawsuits based on health concerns about FCC-approved towers.
   “We were really surprised that we had no local jurisdiction over this,” Chief Tom Martinez said.
   However, in 2002, Nextel settled the suit, which the district had appealed. It agreed to relocate the towers farther away from firefighters’ sleeping quarters.
   “I venture to say they bent over backwards to make everyone happy.” Chief Martinez said. “I would have to say everybody came out a winner.”
PRE-APPROVED SITES
   Some have said local and county government should pre-approve certain sites for cell towers that would have little impact on residents. Cell phone providers could then locate there with fewer hassles and permitting hang-ups.
   Mr. Benson, whose consulting business specializes in helping landowners make money from cell phone tower leases, suggests another benefit from pre-approving sites.
   “In many cases, a municipality might want to make a preferred site on their own property,” he said. “Then it can collect the revenue, instead of a private owner.”
   Goleta Mayor Jean Blois thought that was an intriguing proposition.
   “It is kind of an interesting source of revenue, with no maintenance costs,” she said.
   However, the mayor said it will be a while before Goleta endorses any particular policy. While she favors a policy of encouraging providers to locate towers alongside Highway 101, she said filling in all the details of telecommunications ordinance has been a challenge for her and the council.
   “The feds lay down certain rules, but they don’t leave us many guidelines for how to follow them,” she said.
   “It’s pretty confusing.”