Slashdot Mirror
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."
That way no one can see them from afar ;)
Wind farms are seen the same.
Its an expansion of the technological lifestyle, and a shift away from the purity of nature.
I'm all for people reusing industrial/hidden rundown areas for these eyesores, and prefer to keep the countryside views clear.
liqbase
Cannot most of these towers be esthetically disguised as, say, eagle-nesting platforms, power-generating windmills, or some sort of tall, carbon-based, sunlight-absorbing life-form?
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Not In My Back Yard for...
Cell phone towers
Windmill farms
Nuclear power plants
People would love the benefits of all three, but only if they're nowhere to be seen, or in the case of the nuke plants, just far, far away.
I hope for karmic retribution for these people.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Of course, what I find hilarious....is that while complaining about sparsely located hilltop towers, these people somehow managed to overlook the residential power lines, telephone lines and cable TV lines strung haphazardly from pole to pole every 100 feet at varying heights all throughout their countryside. I think I'd rather see a couple of towers than a mess of wires hanging every which way through my neighborhood.
The visual blight caused by regular phone poles and electrical poles is far worse than for cel towers. Why do people accept regular phone poles but make such a fuss over cel towers? Regular phone poles are much more dangerous as well - consider the number of people who are hurt or killed when they hit them with cars...
Exactly. If I owned the land, I should decide what to do with it, even if it does mean screwing the community's view for a cool $50k.
Surely just painting them light blue or white to suit the sky would make them half dissapear. Cheap and easy solution for a non problem.
Tell that to the first guy to fly into the tower because he COULDN"T SEE THE TOWER. There is a reason the toweres I see are neon orange with red blinking lights. Make them hard to see and you are asking for a helicopter/plain pilot to fly into one. Although, I wonder how you can camoflage a 2,000 foot tower. Making it look like a tree is a joke. Making it dark makes it harder to see, and a danger to pilots.
As for you TV reception, try tuning to that channel. It could be the multipath interference, or maybe you just aren't tuning to that channel.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
The cell phone companies most likely don't want to have to deal with real estate taxes were they to buy property to put towers up. There's many municipalities that get the majority of their tax base from property taxes and things like cell phone towers would most likely be taxed highly due to "impact."
Now an eye-sore, it still can be.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
The Not-In-My-Backyard people also are ignoring water towers, which are considerable more visible. Interestingly, water towers can be used as a landmark to tell your relative location. I would find the idea that someone could use the cell phone tower as landmark intriguing. I get lost so easily...
Yes and people strap magnets to every part of their body thinking it affects their "magnetic blood" (which it isn't) in some way. Lord help you if you put a 300 foot high cell tower ten miles away from them...they're gonna die!!
Meanwhile they get an MRI which is 50,000 times stronger than the entire Earth's magnetic field.
I can see how dictators do it, it's so easy.
You mean false science, such as claiming outright labrats "would have jack" if a cell phone was held an inch from their heads, without ANY shreds of scientific scrutiny, calculations, citations, or even useful links?
It's amusing how you criticize the media and others and yet you do the exact same thing yourself!
Yes, it's true, the rest of us think we have some right to tell you what you can and can't do with your property. We'll be happy to change our minds, and concede that your land is yours to do absolutely whatever you like with if you will please show us the deed that was issued to you by God. What? It was issued by the State? You mean your ownership of the land is derivative of the society you live in in the first place? Interesting.
I can sue companies for poluting my land right now. So the absence of this ability is clearly not why we need the EPA. Why we do shall be left as an exercise for the student.
Apples and oranges, IMO. In one case, you have people charging other people in order to practice their religion. In the other, you have an organization funding a church in return for using their property.
One activity impedes religious activity, the other aids it. So unless the tabernacles in Jesus's time were getting kickbacks from the merchants, and the people at the church are being forced to use that cell provider, you're talking about two completely different things.
(Granted, they'll get much better indoor reception with that provider at that church. But who needs to use a cell phone in a church?)
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Have you ever been to a place that comes close to your libertarian fantasy? They're usually armpits. Certain parts of Texas fit this bill: Urban areas with billboards every 75 feet and 20-mile long stretches of roadway lined with solid strip-malls. Rural areas with multiple junked cars and washing machines in front of most every house. To avoid this fate, homeowners huddle into subdivisions and "voluntarily" sign away far more rights than the government ever dared to take, submitting themselves to private little deed-restriction nazis who send individual nastygrams for every single dandelion spotted in your yard. No thanks.
If you had proper property rights for land you own you wouldn't need the EPA becuase you could sue those big companies that polute your land and get the proper restitution for them destroying your land.
So you'd take power away from federal bureaucrats and hand it over to the one form of life that's actually several notches lower: shiny-suited lawyers. Good call.
As Apple has shown time and again, style is a key objective of engineering in creating a desireable product. Building an aesthetically pleasing cell tower would do an end-run around most (tho by no means all) of the objections.
A huge metal eyesore makes it harder for the product to be deployed. Disguising, blending or beautifying the towers to compliment their surroundings would make them easier to deploy. For example, in New England, many cell towers are hidden atop the towering smokestacks of 18th and 19th century mills (no longer used, but are pleasing brickwork architecture the building owners usually left in place.) They also lease space in tall church steeples... another commodity New England has in abundance.
Where no steeples or smokestacks are available, companies should design a nice cladding that compliments the surroundings.
Hire a real architecht with serious artistic chops to oversee the design and implementation of cell towers, and you spend a lot less money fighting hostile communities. Not hard to figure out.
SoupIsGood Food
I've always thought many/most towers could be made to look like a work of art. If the skyline is going to be invaded, might as well make it interesting. Think of creative spires. Probably could even be designed with light materials and retrofitted to many existing towers.
Heck, maybe somone is already doing it.
Since it's impractical to simply expose animal subjects to continuous low-level radiation and check back on them 20 years later (by that time, it'll be too late for the results to be useful), controlled experiments are used to mimic the effects of long-term exposure. Common adjustments include increasing the radiation dose, as well as engineering the lab animals to be more susceptible to cancer development. This way, the duration of the experiments is shortened enough so that we get the results quickly enough for them to be useful.
The flip side is that the conditions obviously aren't exactly the same as the ones that humans are being exposed to anymore, which is why the arguments about whether cell phone radiation is harmful or not remains inconclusive. (For example, how similar are the new engineered animals to regular ones?) But to dismiss the results out of hand just because you don't understand the methodology is poor reasoning.
The best ones are the palm tree look-a-likes.
A palm tree is fairly symetrical to begin with. And if it is well taken care of, it just looks like a bunch of fronds on a big pole.
Here is a decent example.
No reason to lie.
What people don't like is change in the landscape. Once the change happens and they get used to it, nobody complains anymore. A perfect example of this is the giant Citgo sign on the Boston skyline. When it was first put up (1960s, I think), people complained that the skyline was being altered by some corporate monstrosity. Eventually people quit complaining and got used to it, and it was just another part of the city. Years later, Citgo decided they no longer needed the huge sign and announced it was going to be taken down. Once again, people complained. They said the sign had become part of the Boston skyline that everyone recognized and that taking it down would be causing the area to lose a landmark. Change is what people object to, not the objects themselves.
It used to be said that everybody wants to be 5 minutes from an airport, but nobody wants to have an airport in their area. The public is stupid.
Phone Customer: The reception in my area is poor
Phone support: Yes, that is because we have no transmitters in your area.
Phone Customer: Why not? I deserve to have good reception, I pay my bills
Phone support: We had planned to build one last year at the request of people in your area, but people in your area protested and the plan was scrapped. So, what do you want?
Phone Customer: I want perfect reception in the middle of nowhere, with not a tower to be seen.
Phone support: have a nice day.
I think that about sums it up.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
Helicopter ambulance. Firefighting tanker plane.
I don't know the particulars of your area, but there are reasons for flying at low altitude. Reasons that often involve heavy distractions that would cause one to miss seeing a tower painted to blend in with the sky.
But then again, I could be wrong.
The methodology is prone to screamingly bad results in situations like this.
In effect, they're saying "We're going to test if soaking for an hour in warm water is bad for you, by immersing you in boiling water for 60 seconds. Sure, it's hotter, but it's for a lesser period so it works out the same."
Obviously, anyone will see that's a ridiculous statement, but that's because they have experience with warm water. Radiation is too abstract a concept without even starting in on it's lack of physical evidence until well after the fact.
Well, the founders of this particular State believed that the rights were issued by God. That's why they were prone to use phrases like "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." The Founding Fathers were mostly believers in the principle of Natural Law, the notion that humans have a certain intrinsic moral nature (imparted by a divine figure) that social laws must reflect, or face just rebellion. So, when the Founding Fathers put the "just compensation" clause into the Constitution, it is an indication that they considered property rights to be a Natural Law, and hence granted by God Almighty.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
It is weird that your cell phone does not work. Most cell phones operate in the 850Mhz-ish or 1850Mhz-ish bands. 2.4Ghz interference shouldn't be causing a problem for you....
Here's some free clue, lemming: any kind of electromagnetic radiation is made of photons. Yes, exactly what goes for visible light, goes for any other wavelength.
There is no such bullshit threshold where above X watt it's ionizing, under X watt it's not ionizing. If a single photon can cause a transition in an atom or mollecule, it will. That's the only either-or condition.
Pumping more watts, i.e., more of those photons per second, doesn't change that. There is no such thing as needing 100 photons to cause a transition. Either _one_ causes it, or any amount doesn't.
I.e., if something happens at 100W, it happens just as well at 1 milli-Watt or even 1 micro-Watt. You just have more or less of those ionized atoms, depending on the power. That's all.
I.e., those tests _are_ fair, and they're done by people who actually understand what's happening there.
"False science makes me angry."
Well, then do us all a favour and stop spouting bullshit about stuff you don't have any clue about. Actually read a physics book instead of making your own pseudo-science bullshit.
And no, just because you're the latest nerd in a CS university does _not_ make you an expert in everything on Earth. For starters, as you just proved, it doesn't mean jack squat about knowing any physics.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I propose that a NIMBY database be developed for any one who signs or protests or what ever cell phone or radio services towers of any sort.
Then when they try to get cellular service, they are DENIED flat out. "Sorry, your a NIMBY, we don't offer service to NIMBY's!"
If they have servce now it should be terminated with one of those curt legal letters they send out. Should specifically outline you a NIMBY jerk and your service has been terminated. Don't bother with the other carriers, we told them too! They don't want you either! Go AWAY!
Just like the article states they want ALL the services but don't want to support it. Too bad.
Cellular services need towers. Done.
1311393600 - Back to Black
Let's just say that if you are _the_ black sheep of the village, not to mention the one that lowered their house value by maybe $1000 with that tower... you better have _very_ thick skin. Because it'll make life as a nerd in high school seem pleasant and respectful by comparison.
Anyone thinking that large numbers of people can act like sheep, haven't seen what _small_ numbers of people can do. Your social acceptance or becoming the public enemy can depend on conforming to the local "fashions" in every step you make, every breath you take.
If it's fashionable to hate Mr John Doe for _anything_ whatsoever, people _will_ do it, just to conform to the "community".
E.g., if it's because Mr John Doe built a big mast, and supposedly shaved a couple of cents of someone's property value in the process, even those who _haven't_ lost anything in the process will turn against Mr John Doe. Heck, even people who _gained_ something in the process will do it, just to be on the fashionable and socially acceptable side of the debate.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
An RF engineer knows that lower power from the tower doesn't have anything to do with lower power from the phone. Towers are kept CLOSE TOGETHER to lower the required power output from the phone. It just so happens that having towers close together lowers the amount of power they need to emit in order to reach the phones. In fact, it would be a more accurate statement to say that towers emit lower power because the phones emit lower power, not the other way around. There's no point in having high power at the towers because the phones aren't powerful enough to reach back from that great a distance.
What does the length of a mouse have to do with the effects of non-ionizing radiation on it? Are you supposing that the mouse forms some kind of resonant dielectric cavity or something? This is quite preposterous given that a mouse is far from homogeneous, and even farther from resonant. The Q of a mouse is so incredibly low that it is unlikely in the extreme that there would be any resonance to speak of.
This is something that the medical community doesn't even understand. RF is non-ionizing, so it does not cause damage at the molecular or cellular level. The only effect of non-ionizing incident radiation is heat. That's it. Heat does not cause cancer.
Pine needles? You've got to be kidding me. Reception is poor in forests because of absorption and scattering, not because pine needles are somehow resonant.
Why would you advise someone not to hug a cell phone tower? The tower itself is not the radiating element, at least it had better not be.
Are you REALLY an RF engineer?
I've been there too. I work with the guy who leases water tower space to Verizon, T-Mobil, Nextel, et al...
I'm also a ham radio enthusiast. It used to be that neighbors didn't care if you put a TV antenna on your roof. It used to be that neighbors didn't care that you had a few wire antennas strung out in your back yard.
Now all that's changed. Thanks to the ignorance of a few empowered art school students who know nothing about either radio, economics, or even public safety (yes, these idiots even balk at the need for police radio antennas), putting up an antenna is nearly impossible. However, should I have wanted to erect a pole of the same size for a flag or even an anemometer --they wouldn't care. I think this has to do with unfortunate choice of words we electrical engineers use to describe antenna performance: Radiation. It scares the art students.
This is the victory of foolish romantics over common sense. I wish these self appointed aesthetics police could learn the true depth of their arrogant stupidity --but they're too far gone for that to happen.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
Either the NYT makes mountains out of mole hills as you seem to infer, or they're the ones who manage to find the good and interesting stories that nobody else finds. Last I checked, that makes for good journalism.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Well, there's the longstanding legal doctrine of 'nuisance,' which (if I recall correctly) is "a non-trespassory invasion into the right of quiet enjoyment of one's property." The idea is that if what you're putting up causes the property values around you to diminish by more than the value of what you put up, then either (a) you won't be allowed to do it, or (b) you'll be forced to pay all those people for their harm.
There's an old English case about a 19th century train that runs next to a farmer's flax field. The train emits sparks which could set the field on fire. Do you give the farmer to right to tell the train not to run, or do you allow the train to tell the farmer not to plant? In theory, it doesn't matter: If you give the right to the farmer and the train running has more value than the farmer's crop, then the train company will just pay the farmer for the right to emit sparks, and vice-versa.
The problem comes when there are 1000 different farmers: at this point, it does matter who gets the right, since it's much too difficult to deal with that many farmers. In this case, the government somehow has to figure out which option has the highest value, because the market is too convoluted to do it.
To me, that appears to be exactly what's going on with cell towers -- the value of nationwide cell-phone coverage is worth more than the drop in value of property around the towers.