Back to main page Where does the City Attorney's office stand on the siting of antennas in our communities? On the one hand, the City Attorney, Louise Renne is part of a group of state and local government officials (the LSGAC) who are working both to understand the FCC's jurisdiction and thinking on issues, and to try to give the FCC some input from state and local governmental bodies (see the State/Local Issues page on the FCC site). One should expect this to be a two-way dialog. One such issue is that of ensuring that local jurisdictions have some control over the siting of cellular telephone antenna sites, and another issue LSGAC deals with is the DTV rollout. These are contentious issues.
In terms of monitoring the RF emissions from transmitters, the LSGAC said in its Advisory Recommendation 7 (dated September 26, 1997) that "The LSGAC is not interested in promoting or defending unreasonable or unnecessary compliance monitoring; however, the LSGAC does not believe the Telecommunications Act grants the Commission authority to limit or preempt local compliance monitoring." However, now they advise the City of San Francisco Health Department that it's not within their purview to monitor RF levels in the Sutro Tower area! A monitoring "tour" of the Sutro Tower area scheduled for April 23rd, 1998, has been canceled on the advice of the City Attorney's office.
With respect to DTV, Recommendation 3 of the LSGAC in Advisory Recommendation 9 (dated December 1, 1997) is "(3) The Commission should require broadcasters to submit a digital television facilities plan in each jurisdiction in which the broadcaster will seek to locate new or modified facilities. Such a requirement will allow local planning officials time to evaluate the full compliment of facilities that the broadcast industry believes will be necessary in a given area." This would seem to indicate that the LSGAC, if not our own City Attorney, wants DTV rollout plans to be submitted to local jurisdictions for official and review. Why would official review not include adequate public comment as well? Why is it then, that the City Attorney has consistently frustrated the attempts of neighborhood residents and groups to get the City of San Francisco to take hold of the issues surrounding Sutro Tower?
Fighting for local control over cellular sites is fine, but all of the cellular and PCS sites in San Francisco, put together, radiate far less RF power than Sutro Tower's 25MW (with DTV added). Although our issue with Sutro Tower is primarily seismic safety, Sutro Tower Inc. itself in its Environmental Impact Report (EIR) devoted more space to RF radiation than to any other issue, and basically ignored seismic safety. Following that logic, one would think that the City Attorney would also be working with the community to ensure that additional antennas (DTV) sited on Sutro Tower were as safe as the cellular antennas which will be sited all around our communities.
J. Schuyler <jims@sutro.org>, sponsor & editor
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