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NYT on Cell Phone Tower Controversy
prostoalex writes "The New York Times discusses the controversy of placing cell phone towers on top of hills, a practice to which many people object. According to the article, people frequently complain about the visual impediment and are afraid that property values will decline or some health damage will be done with radio waves. At the same time, people get quite irritated when proper phone service is not provided by the operators, and the calls keep dropping or coverage is poor outside of densely populated areas. Phone companies also lease the land to place the cell phone tower for $30,000-$50,000, which is attractive to many landowners, but some, like Sammy Barsa from NYT article, find themselves persona non grata in the community."
It's a sweet deal if you happen to own a piece of land that a phone company wants to use for a tower. For whatever reason, they prefer to lease land rather than buy, and they pay pretty well for the priveledge of doing this. My mother has such a piece of land, and it nets her around $1000/month last I heard.
What really makes the deal sweet though is that the amount of land taken up by the tower is really small, and you're free to do anything else on the land that you want. I suppose what they're really leasing from you is the privlege to put a tower on your property.
In my mother's case it's a rental property with a fair amount of land, and the tower sits back far from the house. So it doesn't really interfere with the tennants lives, and it basically gives her money-for-nothing every month.
Here in Coral Gables, Florida (The City Beautiful) there are quite a few cellphone towers disguised as trees. http://www.fraudfrond.com/
Alright! I know I'm in there! If I don't come out, I'll have to come in after me!
In my town, there is a cell tower that looks like a Douglas Fir tree. If you know it is a cell tower, you can tell that it's false, but people usually don't notice it until being told it is a cell tower. Something like -- "do you see something odd on that hill over there?" isn't usually enough. Something like "see that tree next to the _____ and up from the _____, that's a cell tower." That's usually enough to help people pick it out.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
The fake tree cell towers I've seen are 1) much taller than the surrounding trees, 2) not shaped like the nearby trees, and 3) regular in shape, unlike real trees.w ireless/Cell-Tower-Tree.jpg
n gs.htm
For instance:
http://campus.champlain.edu/faculty/whitmore/img/
or
http://danbricklin.com/log/0f010790.jpg
or
http://www.80acres.com/Stupid%20things/stupid_thi