On May 1, I attended a hearing scheduled at 10 a.m. during the weekday regarding a Sprint PCS wireless telecommunications facility, as they call them. This particular four-antenna device was on a telephone pole just up the street from me on Boniface Avenue. on Point Dume. On Aug. 4 at 6:30 p.m. at the City Hall Chambers my appeal is being heard. I urge you to attend the meeting. Sprint PCS is just the first telecommunications “facility” to start wiring Pt. Dume, but you know Verizon-“Can you hear me now?”-and other companies are lining up to put their signals through our neighborhood as well. This issue deserves a serious public debate.
Evidently Sprint wants to “upgrade” the systems on the Point and the city was calling this a minor conditional use permit. A single “interim” planning commissioner, Ed Knight, was presiding over the original meeting. The problem is that no one on Pt. Dume was ever notified that these systems were installed in the first place back in 1998! You can spot these devices by their four vertical antennas up next to the telephone poles. Is there one in your backyard?
I appealed the rubber stamp OK that Mr. Knight gave the six-person contingent from Sprint. I don’t think that irradiating the neighborhood is in keeping with the rural residential nature of Pt. Dume. I also feel that it devalues my property because a growing number of people are concerned about what all this radiation is doing to our bodies, particularly our children.
The issue of cell phone radiation in neighborhoods is being fought throughout the country. The Palisades just went through a major battle with Sprint as chronicled in a LA Weekly article on July 3, 2003. Believe it or not, due to a statute in the 1996 Telecommunications Act that the corporate giants manipulated with God knows what kind of lobbying, a city or a person can’t fight these installations on the grounds of health concerns. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Makes one think of tobacco, mercury, asbestos, PCB’s, DDT etc. So we are fighting it on the grounds that it is not consistent with the rural residential nature of our neighborhood.
I would encourage you to learn about the subject of radio frequency exposure at the Electromagnetic Radiation Network, www.EMRNetwork.org/index.htm
Please attend the appeal at the planning commission meeting at 23815 Stuart Ranch Road on Aug. 4 at 6:30 p.m. E-mail the City Planner Tom Gorham at tgorham@ci.Malibu.ca.us, and please contact me if you want to help out, bcarmic@earthlink.net
Bob Carmichael