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Long Island Town Enacts Tough Cell Tower Limits
crimeandpunishment writes "They're getting tougher on towers on Long Island. The town of Hempstead, NY has imposed some of the toughest cell phone tower restrictions in the country. The ordinance prohibits wireless equipment within 1,500 feet of homes, schools, day care centers, and houses of worship, unless the company can prove absolute need. A spokesman for Verizon says, 'It's not unheard of for towns to have issues, but this is extreme,' and says this makes 95 percent of the town off limits to future antenna construction." With internet access by 3G, 4G and WiMax getting ever more common, I suspect that not everyone in the town will appreciate blocking out the companies that provide it.
Dang, did I just get first post? The frosty-drink troll guy must be trying to use his Android from Hempstead.
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I don't understand the purpose of these regulations at all. What difference does it make how close a tower is to a day care center or place of worship? Within 1,500 feet of homes? How do they expect to get cellular service at home, then? Hm.
I have two guesses which aren't mutually exclusive. The first is that someone has bought into the hysteria that cell phones cause radiation damage and hence wants them far away from places where people gather or live. Second, that this is a sly attempt to create a monopoly for a provider. It'd be interesting to see if someone already satisfies these regulations. If we start seeing more extremely restrictive regulations like this, that would be an indication that someone is organizing local monopolies.
Assuming signal strength is somehow harmful, they're doing the exactly wrong thing to deal with it.
By imposing those limits, they force towers to be further apart. To cover the area anyway they'll have to bring the power way up. The schools, daycare centers and so on will probably get about the same amount of RF as before, but whatever is near that tower will get cooked. And for those who protest the aesthetics, it's going to be a big ugly one as well.
What they should be doing instead is peppering the area with a weak tower on every roof. Then they can have coverage without strong emitters anywhere.
>>>If we impose the 1,500 foot blackout... there is what, maybe ONE place to put a tower?
This reminds me of a conversation I had with my art teacher. I said the US Congress has banned incandescent bulbs effective 2012. He immediately pointed out that the law doesn't directly ban incandescents. It requires a 50% reduction in energy usage. I replied that's the same effect as a direct ban because no incandescent can meet that standard, so what's the difference? None.
Same with this celltower law. It doesn't directly ban the towers, but the 1500 foot limit has the same effect, which I bet was the politicians' plan all along. "We did not ban celltowers in Hempstead." Yeah. Accept that you did because now no towers can be built.
Aside -
I consider Edison's incandescent bulbs to be a superior technology to CFLs. Fast turnon, can be used in cold/hot areas (or enclosed fixtures), cost consumers 1/10th to buy, use fewer materials, easy to recycle, and no mercury vapor.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
There are often times when I wish to be less connected. However, nice of you to make the decision as to where and when for everyone around you, too.
"Radio signal strength decays exponentially. "
No, it decays geometrically.
Exponential decay would be of the form P=An^d, where "d" is the distance, and A and n are constants.
The formula for free space losses is of the form P=Ad^2 - a geometrical loss.
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I for one welcome our new hemp growing Amish cell tower overlords.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
We at Evil Co. sympathise with the town's wish not to be bombarded with EM radiation. A it is clearly the will of the people that they not have these signals directed in their vicinity, we wish to respect their wishes, even at the cost of some profit. Unfortunately, complying with these new laws would require significantly increasing the power output of other towers to compensate, and so we are unable to continue to offer service without violating the intent and spirit, if not the letter, of this law. As we can not provide a service in this town, we are willing to waive early termination fees for any customers in the affected area, as a gesture of good will. We hope that they will enjoy their relaxed lifestyle, free from the burdens of modern technology.
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There's a big difference.
The reason why the law makes an efficiency requirement is because it's not the bulbs themselves that are the concern, but the energy they use. Banning incandescent light bulbs specifically would allow them to be replaced with something even less efficient, if there's an alternative that's cheap and isn't technically an "incandescent light bulb". If that happened, the law would have had the opposite of the desired effect.
By writing the law that way you don't mandate or exclude any technology. If an incandescent light bulb can be made to be efficient enough, that's just fine.
Honestly, this all comes down to how dumb people are. I'll give an example from where I grew up
It was a relatively small town, but within 10-20 minutes of large cities here in New York. There is literally NO cell phone reception around the entire radius of the town. You have to drive at least 10-15 minutes to get cell reception. So Verizon (and at that time, CellularOne who was recently bought out by AT&T) wanted to put up a tower right in the middle of the town behind some barns and silos. Not visible from the road but if you tried hard enough you could see it.
The town, who I knew from experience hated not having cell service, was concerned about property values dropping and how "bad the tower would look" when driving by...so Verizon proposed using one of the "camouflage" towers that looks like a pine tree. The town reviewed it, and STILL said no because it "didn't look enough like a tree". So Verizon came back and said "ok we will build the tower inside a silo. You won't be able to see it AT ALL. The reception will be reduced slightly because of it being enclosed, but you will still have service". Instead of approving it, they put it up for a vote, and the tower STILL voted it down over concerns of "radiation".
Weeks later I remember hanging out with friends, whose fathers and mothers were on the town board, and others who had voted no, and hearing them and their kids bitch about the fact that there still wasn't cell reception, and blaming the cell companies for NOT PROVIDING A FEASIBLE SOLUTION!
I think this happens more often than not around the country, where stupid backwards people who don't really know what they are talking about, wind up shooting town technological advances in favor of "oh that looks bad" or "oh i heard it does _______ which is bad" without knowing the facts, or understanding how important technology can be, especially in rural areas that have been without it. In this case, lack of cell phone reception and broadband internet kept many businesses and other things important for growth of a town or city out of the area because of the lack of available technology.
It really amazes me at how resistant people are. I'd rather have my property value go down a little than be without cell reception or internet service in this day in age. It hurts more not to have it than it would to just grin and bear it for the good of advancement.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
Wow, where do I start... Let's keep it short.
First, this country is not a democracy, even though we espouse the democratic concepts. It's something called a representative republic. If your school failed to teach you that, or you failed high school civics, then go look it up, I'm sure wikipedia has an article on it.
Second, no town or person can do "whatever they want". If they could, it would be an anarchy and there would be no town ordinances in the first place. Don't forget that they have to follow rules as well (state & federal), and if you let people do whatever they want, they will eventually do stupid or unfair things that just hurt themselves or other people. (Remember slavery? It's an extreme example, but totally valid to represent what happens when you let the 'majority' do what they want.)
Third is the communist thing. We'll ignore the original utopian concept that communism was meant to be and go with the more modern variant based on the old Soviet Union and the current China. Hmmm, a government setting a restrictive rule that limits both corporate endeavors and public access to communication utilities/resources. Yep, that qualifies as modern communism. But that's the opposite of your declaration... Yeah, speaking of failing high school civics, I think we've got your number.
Just a small note on utopias. There are many different utopian theories, and they are all interesting but fatally flawed. I don't believe in the possiblity of any form of utopia existing until after all of humanities basic psyche has been severely altered, and that isn't happening any time soon, if ever.