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250-ft tower raises new Bellevue fears
By John J. Hopkins Times
Residents in the Bellevue neighborhood and Depew are unhappy with a plan to improve New York State's emergency communications that includes a 250-foot lattice-constructed tower on state-owned land off Indian Road.
The tower, which would be built behind a New York State Department of Transportation facility at 111 Indian Road, is one of between 500- 1,500 towers that would be built across New York for a "Statewide Wireless Network," referred to as SWN.
State officials say that concerns regarding the reliability of New York's communications infrastructure date back to 1996. In 2000, the State Office for Technology established an office for the statewide network.
The project, state officials say, would provide a digital communi cations system that would cover almost 97 percent of New York State. The system would allow agencies at various levels to instantly communicate.
However, local residents are raising questions about the tower's effect on health, while at least one county legislator has called the project's legitimacy into question.
Among those who are against the tower are the Cheektowaga Citizens Coalition, the Town Board, Erie County Legislator Tim Kennedy and the Depew-Cheektowaga Taxpayers Association.
John Stonefield, president of the citizens coalition, questions the rationale in placing a tower in the Bellevue neighborhood.
Stonefield is concerned about the health of Bellevue residents, who have dealt with higher than average asthma and ovarian cancer rates, along with other health problems. Many in the neighborhood believe that byproducts from local commercial sites have contributed to the higher rates.
Stonefield points to health studies in Europe that appear to link wireless towers to higher rates of leukemia and other illnesses.
For example, a 2004 study commissioned by the German government found that persons living within 1,300 feet of cell tower radiation had three times the normal cancer risk.
However, a British study found that less than five percent of people who believed that cell towers brought on symptoms such as anxiety, nausea and tiredness could not detect if the tower signals were on or off during tests.
The Office for Technology (OFT) noted that the Federal Communications Commission sets the limits for human exposure for all radio frequency emissions.
According to a 2005 environmental impact study, the OFT "thoroughly evaluated the electromagnetic radiation exposure that will result from the SWN and determined that calculated power densities at critical receptors were significantly below the FCC-allowable maximum power densities."
Still, local aesthetics would also be disturbed by a tower of such height, Stonefield added. He said that persons traveling along Rowley Road in the fall can see the top of a nearby landfill, which is considerably shorter in height.
"You'll be able to see it easily over the trees and the landfill," Stonefield said.
A proliferation of cellular phone and other communications towers in recent years has many citizens con- cerned for area landscapes. Residents in north Cheektowaga have voiced strong objections to a proposed 90- foot cellular tower behind the Cleveland Hill Fire Hall.
A communications tower behind the Police and Courts Building on Union Road stands 150 feet tall, said Chief of Police Christine M. Ziemba.
Councilmember Tom Johnson blasted the proposed location, stating that a study on its visual impacts listed the effects it would have at locations such as Amherst State Park and North Creek Park, but did not consider neighboring homes located less than one mile from the site.
"The proposal for a 250-foot lattice type structure poses a significant visual impact upon hundreds of homes in surrounding subdivisions," Johnson wrote in a letter to the project's director.
Legislator Kennedy is questioning the cost of the project, and its eligibility for federal Homeland Security funding.
Kennedy, who serves as vice chairman of the legislature's public safety committee, said that the federal government's standard for two-way communication is called a "P25" standard.
However, the statewide wireless network has hired a company, M/A Com that will install "open sky technology," which Kennedy said will not meet federal standards.
"My first responder constituents have made it clear to me that everyone in their field and in the communications industry knows full well that 'open sky technology' is a proprietary technology and not an open P25 technology," Kennedy wrote in an August 4 letter to Governor Eliot Spitzer.
According to Kennedy, Pennsylvania is the only other state to attempt open sky technology, but deployment there has been "problematic."
Mike Saia, vice president of Saia Communications, alerted Kennedy to the differences. In a letter to Kennedy, Saia said that he believes county officials were misled by a SWN representative who "took full advantage" of the committee's limited technological knowledge at a July 19 public hearing.
Kennedy also noted that one of the contingencies placed on M/A Com was to license their proprietary technology to three additional vendors, which has not occurred.
Several public hearings on the SWN's tower sites were held throughout the state in 2004, including one in October at the Erie County Fire Training Academy on Broadway. That hearing was sparsly attended and at that time, state officials said that tower locations had not been decided.
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