May 1, 2005
The New York Times
By Katie Hafner
MENDHAM TOWNSHIP, N.J. - The residents here, among the wealthiest in the
nation, pay top dollar to live in this quiet slip of a place, happily
trading convenience for woodsy acreage and maple-lined streets. The quaint
old post office, straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, is the only
commercial building in town, and the Fourth of July parade is the liveliest
event of the year.
So when Verizon Wireless proposed building a 150-foot cellular transmission
tower atop one of the highest hills in town, local officials said no,
thinking local zoning laws would dictate where the tower could be placed.
They were wrong. In the next few months, after a futile battle against
Verizon and four other wireless carriers, the residents of Mendham Township
will see the tower go up, visible from most parts of the town.
Their losing battle is becoming commonplace as hundreds of communities
around the country wage the same fight against cellphone companies and the
march of spindly, metallic and freakishly tall antennas into quiet, affluent
precincts of suburbia.
Fears that the gigantic towers will reduce property values and cause health
problems from radio-frequency emissions have created the kind of opposition
that is usually reserved for waste treatment plants in many towns.
The towers, sometimes disguised as fir trees, cacti or flagpoles, were once
confined mostly to sparsely populated stretches of highway or industrial
zones. More are being planted in residential areas as the wireless
companies - responding to subscriber demands - race to build their networks
for seamless coverage.
But many suburbanites would rather put up with bad cellphone service than
allow the structures in their midst. In fact, many dead spots in the
nation's wireless networks persist not from technological limitations but
from community resistance to the towers.
"We are very cranky and frustrated," said Robert Pierson, the deputy mayor
of Mendham Township, a pre-Revolutionary War town in northern New Jersey.
Ed Donohue, a lawyer based in Washington who has represented wireless
carriers in several cases, estimates that more than 500 cell tower disputes
around the country have ended up in court.
As carriers expand their networks to cover more residential areas, they are
invoking the federal telecommunications law, which allows them to ask either
a state or federal court to overturn a local zoning decision to reject a
tower if that decision has the effect of prohibiting the provision of
cellphone services. The federal law prohibits towns from rejecting a
transmission tower on the grounds that it poses health concerns, because
there is no conclusive evidence the transmissions harm people at the levels
allowed by the Federal Communications Commission.
The carriers, more often than not, are winning the legal skirmishes.
Of course, even the resisters depend on cellphone service. "No one can drive
down to the corner to buy milk without calling five people," said Nancy
Moorthy, who lives in Bedminster, N.J., not far from Mendham Township, and
has been fighting the installation of a cell tower near her home for nearly
10 years.
The problem, says Laura Altschul, director of national siting policy at
T-Mobile, is people "want the service, but they don't want the facility near
where they live."
"Five years ago, the network truly was for mobility, and very few people
were using cellphones once they got inside their homes," she said. "But now
we're seeing that we do need to move closer into the residential areas."
That shift in expectations for the nation's cellular network has created "a
train wreck between national public policy and individual, highly local
questions," Ms. Moorthy said. "The way the statute's worded, the carriers
have many towns running scared."
In Mendham Township, with a population of 5,600, multimillion-dollar homes
are set back from the main roads along long narrow lanes. The area's lush,
hilly terrain contributes to its appeal but obstructs the lines of sight
needed for clear cell signals.
In other parts of the country, like the Midwest's plains, cell towers can be
many miles apart without degrading the signal. But in places like Mendham
Township, they need to be bunched more closely. The contested tower here
will bridge a gap in service along a half-mile stretch of county road.
The cellular dead spots are so familiar to locals that they know how to
skirt them like gravestones. Mr. Pierson says he often sees people pull up
in front of his house to finish a conversation before continuing up his
road.
The same fickle cellphone reception exists in Granger, Ind. "In our
particular mile stretch of area, it isn't good but I don't care," said Joan
Gindelberger, who, with her husband and a group of neighbors, fought off the
installation of a cell tower next to her house.
Ms. Gindelberger said she and her husband, Donald, were surprised by how
readily they became community activists. "My husband would rather have a
root canal than get up and speak in public," Ms. Gindelberger said. "But the
reality was that we were going to have a cell tower with a generator running
outside our bedroom window."
The citizens of Granger were opposing a fellow neighbor, who was planning to
install a tower himself and lease it to wireless companies. Had the group
gone up against the wireless carriers themselves, Ms. Gindelberger said,
they might not have won so handily.
Mendham Township's activists faced far tougher adversaries. The carriers
sued in state court claiming that the zoning board had effectively barred
them from putting a tower on a site found to be uniquely suited to a
demonstrated need for service. Last year the New Jersey Supreme Court let
stand an appeals court ruling in favor of the carriers.
Howie Waterman, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless, said the carrier's search
in Mendham Township for a suitable site was painstaking.
"We looked at 33 different locations," he said. "It wasn't random by any
stretch."
For Francis Wood, who has lived on a quiet private lane in town for 25
years, the soon-to-be erected tower is nothing short of disastrous.
The tower's base, a 1,200-square foot enclosure disguised to look like a
barn, will be about 200 feet from Ms. Wood's front door. Ms. Wood and her
husband have paid more than $30,000 over a period of five years to hire her
own lawyer to fight the 14-story tower, which she said might also produce a
continual thrum.
"People don't move here for convenience," said Ms. Wood, who is bracing
herself for construction of the tower to begin any day now. "They move here
so they can hear a pin drop."
Ms. Wood's neighbor, Sammy Barsa, however, stands to reap a sizable
windfall. The tower will be placed on an edge of Mr. Barsa's property that
adjoins Ms. Wood's, and the carriers are likely to pay him more than $60,000
a year to lease the land.
"You have to look at who it's going to benefit," Mr. Barsa said. "It will
benefit everyone in town. There's a pain and there's a gain."
Town officials had recommended alternative sites on municipal property,
which they considered less obtrusive and which would have generated revenue
for the town.
But Verizon Wireless rejected the town's suggestions, arguing that Mr.
Barsa's property made the most sense because of the stretch of road the
carriers needed to cover.
In the end, Richard Krieg, the mayor of Mendham Township, said, the town
felt outspent and outmaneuvered by the carriers' legal and technical
resources. "We didn't have access to the consulting engineers they had," he
said.
Mr. Barsa, meanwhile, has become the town's persona non grata - at least
among the anti-tower camp. Lydia Schutte, who lives down the road from where
the tower will be built, has yet to meet Mr. Barsa, because, she said, "I
don't think he goes to neighborhood gatherings anymore."