Among national cell phone service providers, Verizon Wireless has been noticeably absent in the Charlottesville area. Recently, the company has been aggressively installing cell phone towers in Albemarle County, but efforts to blanket the city in service have run into opposition from citizens concerned about the health risks.
Verizon officials hope to put up six new towers and selected Greenbrier Elementary School as one of their potential locations for a cell phone tower, and the school would get a nifty (as yet undisclosed) chunk of money for leasing the space. But Natalie Russell is one of several neighbors who are worried about the possible health risks of having these towers on schools.
 A cell phone tower at Greenbrier could be disguised as a tree to help it blend in, though it would have to be taller than the real trees in order to work. |
“There are lots of things we’re told are safe that end up not being safe,” says Russell, mother of an 18-month-old boy. “We don’t know enough about the safety of it and we’re exposing our kids for such a long period of time and I’m not comfortable with that.” Russell says she was not impressed with the answers Verizon gave during their meeting with the Greenbrier community in the spring.
City zoning currently doesn’t allow cell phone towers on school sites or other noncommercial properties, but Verizon is petitioning to change that zoning ordinance to allow the poles in residential areas and at the site of institutions.
The thing is, the city legally can’t consider the health risks of the towers because of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, says senior city planner Brian Haluska, and could be sued if it does so. As a result, says Haluska, many have decided to tackle the issue from an aesthetic standpoint because that is where citizens have the most leverage.
Russell thinks there are plenty of ways to keep towers off of school grounds and out of the community. “There are enough reasons that we can legitimately keep them from doing this without even taking into consideration the health factor, from property values, to aesthetics, to chopping down our trees, to letting corporations into our schools,” Russell says.
At a June 24 work session, local attorney Steve Blaine, who is representing Verizon, showed city planning commissioners a collection of slides with examples of stealth towers, which hide antennae in forms of steeples, flagpoles and trees. Some planning commissioners were skeptical of how stealthy the towers would end up being. The Planning Commission will hold a public hearing in the next several months on the matter.
Charlottesville City Schools spokesperson Cass Cannon says that schools have not yet taken any position on the issue. “Until there is a concrete proposal under consideration,” Cannon says, “we really won’t move on making any decision. Because there haven’t been any concrete or legal changes, we are still waiting and watching.”
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