WASHINGTON-In a potential trend-setting move that could prove a huge loophole in the antenna siting law, the Vermont Department of Public Service has asked the state legislature to consider allowing state and local government agencies to impose radio frequency radiation safety guidelines through private contracts that are stricter than federal requirements.
In its December report to the General Assembly, the department said that while federal law prohibits cities and states from blocking the placement of antennas on health grounds for carriers that comply with federal RF rules, there may still be wiggle room for cities and states.
In particular, the Vermont Department of Public Service argues that in regard to siting of antennas on state-owned buildings and land, “the standard contract and contracting procedures could consider seeking agreement from service providers to reduce RF exposure limits and report periodic exposure measurements.”
As for regional and local governmental bodies, the department could urge carriers to voluntarily reduce RF emissions and report periodic exposure reports. Or, the state agency said, such reporting could be required. Providers could also be urged to site antennas away from populated areas, the department added.
The practical effect of the recommendations would be reduced coverage as a result of lower transmitter power output, a consequence that could prove competitively devastating for new personal communications services networks.
The industry estimates the rollout of PCS-the next-generation digital successor to cellular phones-will require 100,000 antenna sites.
“You cannot supersede by private contract what the Congress has ordained,” said Thomas Wheeler, president of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
The losers, said Wheeler, are the citizens who are denied access to wireless technology. “The call doesn’t go through.”
And if the state cannot halt antenna siting because of RF health concerns, it may choose to play the interference card.
“The power of states and localities to protect the health, safety and welfare of their citizens may allow them to expert some control over the siting of facilities which can generate (radio frequency interference) and hamper the effectiveness of medical equipment and other commercial electronic devices,” the report stated.
The report comes at a time of intense lobbying by the wireless telecom industry for federal relief from antenna siting moratoria and restrictions like those contemplated by Vermont.
Michele Farquhar, chief of the Federal Communications Commission’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, said in a Jan. 13 letter to Wheeler that some states and local entities may be violating the antenna siting law.
In addition to considering CTIA’s petition for declaratory ruling on federal pre-emption of state and local moratoria on wireless antenna siting, Farquhar said the bureau may ask the commission for a rulemaking that would set specific standards and procedures for resolving siting disputes between carriers and state and local governments.
The industry continues to be dogged by the RF health issue, despite passage of the antenna siting law last February and lack of hard scientific evidence linking pocket phones to cancer. Several lawsuits making that claim have failed. Others are pending.
A five-year, $25 million research program on potential RF bioeffects funded by the wireless industry, which carriers and manufacturers believed would give them a clean bill of health, has struggled to produce fresh scientific data.
That could hurt industry since Congress and federal regulators maintain that potential health risks from pocket phones cannot be ascertained from existing research.
Environmentalists and the communications union, which is soliciting membership from the wireless ranks, may attempt to exploit that void. Organized labor contributed $35 million to the Clinton-Gore campaign and no doubt expects something in return from the federal government.
Another big obstacle in industry’s eyes is the Environmental Protection Agency. EPA, which persuaded the FCC to craft RF guidelines that are more conservative than those proposed in 1993, says the new hybrid RF standard adopted by the commission last August protects pocket phone users against thermal harm but not against potential long-term, non-thermal bioeffects.
The new RF standard was to take effect Jan.1, but the FCC extended the date nine months.
The wireless industry wants EPA to declare the FCC’s RF standard safe, but the agency has yet to do so.
“Unless the courts rule otherwise, such (zoning) bylaws would not appear to violate 704’s (federal antenna siting law) prohibition against localities regulating the constructing, placement or modification of wireless facilities based on the environmental effect of RF emissions if those emissions fall within FCC-sanctioned levels, provided that application of the bylaws does not have the effect of entirely prohibiting wireless communications from the area,” the Vermont report said.
One party that is challenging the new FCC hybrid guideline argues that while the antenna siting law keeps zoning boards from regulating “the placement, construction, and modification” of wireless facilities that adhere to federal RF guidelines, it is silent on the operation of cell sites.
