Despite much opposition from the community and efforts by Mayor Ed Malloy and the City Council to find an alternate site for the cell tower planned at 509 W. Depot Ave, the news out today is that US Cellular is resuming construction of their cell tower.
Here is a letter from one of the opposition leaders, Diane Rosenberg:
Dear Friends,
For three months, the US Cellular cell phone tower was postponed as several people in the community worked to relocate it to another site.
Now, despite their best efforts, construction has again resumed and the tower is expected to be complete by the end of the week.
Four other sites were considered, and all were found to have contaminated soil. US Cellular will not move the tower to those locations even though an offer was made to pay for all the expenses of moving the tower and dealing with the contaminated soil.
The location of this cell phone tower will adversely affect many businesses, residences, and in particular, pose harm to school children who attend Lincoln and Maharishi School.
We are organizing action against US Cellular, and I will keep you posted as to next steps.
IN THE MEANTIME, please call the following people at US Cellular TODAY to protest the tower. If you have a contract with them, please seriously consider terminating your phone service and let them know that. US Cellular is the major provider in Fairfield. Let’s make this hurt them where they most feel it – in their pocketbook.
The following people are the best ones to call. The order is from Senior Management down:
Robert Jakubek, Senior Director of Engineering, based in Madison, WI: 608-441-4530
Mary Smart, Director of Engineering, based in Cedar Rapids: 319-743-1201
Lori Daw, Regional Division Head, based in Cedar Rapids – 319-743-1210 or 319-560-2398Please express your concern and leave a message if you don’t get them, but please be polite.
Sincerely,
Diane Rosenberg
My position on the issue continues to be that it is the responsibility of cell phone companies and their agents to prove beyond reasonable doubt that there cell tower technologies poses no risk to humans, animals or the environment. Furthermore I feel it it the responsibility of the City Council and Mayor to be advocates for the citizens of Fairfield to restrict the placement of cell towers based on aesthetics and/or health risks.
Cell Phone Tower Documentary from Luke Stenger on Vimeo.
[Local Fairfield resident Will Merydith is a husband, father, web developer and writer for Living In Small Sizes.]
meh. We've got so many towers – radio, cellular, invincible – I doubt one more is somehow going to be the tipping point. Plus, reception in town sucks!
(I assume you meant to post this under your blog title?
I really have to wonder what this statement means:
"The location of this cell phone tower will adversely affect many businesses, residences, and in particular, pose harm to school children who attend Lincoln and Maharishi School."
I know there's a tremendous amount of mis-information (presumably from both sides, but what I've found appears to be primarily from the "cell-phone towers are going to eat your dingoes" camp).
I've avoided posting anything about this topic mainly because it turns into a "corporations always lie to you" argument. But I really have to wonder what science is being used when making statements about ill effects. The closest thing I could find to anyone who wrote up a researched opinion on this is from
an article at Cancer.org
There are other, far more obvious detrimental things going on in the area. Take for example the fact that the EPA gives me info on the Fairfield Coal Gassification plant being a Superfund site. Far more ominously, the Iowa Malleable Iron Company had all kinds of good stuff leaching into our soil and air for quite a while. And by quite a while I of course mean that it's still going on. Then there's the particulate lead in the air (yum!).
Anyway, I'd LOVE for this issue to move beyond the realm of opinion and into the realm of something meaningful coz I'd much rather not dismiss this issue as another South Entrance type of thing.
MUM University's General Counsel, William Goldstein, wrote an open letter to US Cellular's President, Jack Rooney. It was printed as a paid advertisement in the June 17, 2009 Fairfield Ledger.
Here's a (poorly) scanned image: http://www.eddiecaplan.com/images/misc/MumCellLet...
If somebody has a soft-copy that would be nice to share.
It makes the strongest non-meh argument against the placement of this cell tower I've seen to date.
I probably wouldn't stop using US Cellular over this one issue. But they made the mistake of making me wonder, and I started shopping around for a different provider here in Fairfield.
As a result, I've discovered that iWireless — a T-Mobile affiliate — has attractive plans. We're probably going to switch and save about 30% on our bill for 4 lines.
Does anybody have experience with iWireless? We've used a test phone from them for about a week and the coverage is OK but not stellar. It's fine in our home, work, and driving around town. But we can't get any signal inside of Revelations — big brick building — unless we sit within 15-20 feet of the front windows or upstairs (which is always within 15-20 feet of the windows, I think).
Do you use somebody else besides US Cellular? How well does it work? Any recommendations?
That's a bug (it's auto-adding to random categories). Tying to fix it . . .
Eddie, thanks for the scan.
Do you have any idea what the university's US Cellular contract is? Is it because they got a better bulk deal?
Also, I'm wondering if the university communicated with any of the other providers (if they switch from US Cellular to another provider I'd think they'd run into the same problem all over again – since the tower exists to provide service to an increased subscriber-base).
Will posted a soft copy here: http://fairfieldvoice.com/2009/06/20/cell-towers-...
Thank you!
I've been (reluctantly) on iWireless for the last year. Here are the cons:
* No short-code services. AT ALL! So no GOOGL, no twitter (40404), and no any other cool new short-code-based service
* No online bills (tho' this may change)
* Sketchy access even in Fairfield (I'm petitioning for another tower, dammit!)
There are no pros I can really think of. My recommendation would be to get a TMobile contract and say that you live in Newton, or whereever they allow Iowa subscribers to live.
No, I have no info about MUM.
I am under no illusion that switching to another provider will, in itself, make our health-environment better. Like you, I also suspect that by switching we could set of a cascade of unintended consequences. But if for nothing else but the principle of it, I want US Cellular and the other carriers to get a strong message that they cannot ignore the concerns of the customers and communities they serve.
Any thoughts about AllTel? Verizon bought them recently.
We switched to iWireless. The reception is noticeably worse in some buildings (Revelations) but we're saving about $40 a month for 4 people. If my 3rd son in Boston switches from Verizon we'll save another $40 a month. For now, I can live with worse reception in Revelations given the savings. I can always switch again.
But now we've switched from CDMA to GSM so the radiation is probably worse, because GSM is a higher-powered protocol, if I understand Sundar correctly.
Sigh.