Ashland City Council Collaborates with Residents to Regulate Placement of New Cell Tower Facilities
Five years of public testimony at City Council meetings have identified significant negative health and environmental effects of wireless technology. In addition, unchecked deployment of cell towers contributes to decreased property values, reduction in business and neighborhood livability, and an overall degradation of city aesthetics.
In response, Ashland City Council took the bold and wise move to hire a renowned cell tower attorney to prepare a comprehensive telecommunications ordinance for Ashland. The objective is to prevent unhealthy, involuntary public exposure to man-made pulsed electromagnetic radiation (PEMR), known to especially affect children and those suffering from Electromagnetic Sensitivity (EMS) – a medically recognized disability.
Jackson County and North Ashland residents are now aware of a newly proposed cell tower. Billings Farm owner, Thaddeus Gala, has given AT&T permission to place a 150-foot cell tower on his property along Hwy 99, in conspicuous view of Ashland’s northern entrance (see photo). This tower will be taller than the Ashland Springs Hotel.
As indicated in AT&T’s computer-generated coverage maps, this proposed tower will NOT fully correct service-gap coverage in North Ashland because the proposed tower will sit too low on the property. Incorrect placement of towers in other cities has resulted in the immediate need for additional towers to mitigate such service gaps. These additional towers would obviously increase the involuntary public exposure to unnecessary wireless radiation. (See the last paragraph for a meeting announcement regarding the tower.)
5G (5th Generation) is a crafty marketing term encompassing three frequency bands referred to as low, medium, and high. The high-band frequency begins at approximately 24 GHz and extends into the range of millimeter waves, which is 30 GHz to 300 GHz. These frequencies are similar to those used in your microwave oven, so essentially, 5G would be microwaving the communities where it is deployed.
In 1996, when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) established “safe public exposure levels,” cell phones were a luxury item for most people, and 5G was just a futuristic concept. Back then, a (2G) cell phone’s function was to merely send and receive calls. Today’s expanded cell phone features require significantly more power in the form of PEMR, at levels where “safe” must now be challenged. In essence, the FCC’s current regulations do not protect us from short- and long-term health effects from exposure to current wireless technologies, especially at the higher frequencies (5G).
In accordance with municipal ordinances, telecom companies are free to place cell towers wherever willing property owners like Gala can profit from such placement. Telecom is free to implement any frequency band on existing cell towers. Since telecom companies fought, preemptively, for liability protection against cell tower radiation-related health claims, it stands to reason they must know more about adverse health effects than they are admitting. Is it any wonder that people all over the country are taking action to reign in Telecom’s unrestrained expansion of wireless technology?
Ashland is known to be a health-conscious innovator for its Smart Meter opt-out program and for its forward-thinking implementation of Ashland Fiber Network. Successfully limiting 5G would further demonstrate we are a community of trailblazers, unafraid to challenge the status quo and protect human and environmental health from unnecessary man-made radiation.
Attend a Community Meeting
March 11th, 7-9 pm, Jackson Wellsprings
Oregon for Safer Technology and the Health Research Institute will present solid science and planned community actions to oppose the Billings Farm cell tower.
References:
