Focus on RF Safety, Not Faster Wireless Approvals: Children’s Health Defense
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) urged the FCC to back off its review of how the commission can further reduce wireless red tape and instead address the Environmental Health Trust’s August RF safety petition (see 2508070032). The group's filing came as the FCC is hit with hundreds of submissions -- ahead of any comment deadline -- opposing changes in a wireless infrastructure NPRM that commissioners approved at September's meeting.
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Some of the concerns were similar to those raised on a wireline notice of inquiry that was approved by commissioners the same day, both by unanimous votes (see 2509300063). As of late Tuesday, more than 750 comments were posted in docket 25-276.
Children’s Health Defense supported the trust's petition asking the FCC to act on a 2021 remand from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit of the agency’s 2019 RF safety rules. The commission “has refused to obey the D.C. Circuit remand for four years and is heedlessly dedicating tremendous effort toward ‘eliminating barriers to wireless deployment,’” said a filing posted Tuesday. The agency's “plain intent is to ensure the entire population is continually overdosed with electromagnetic radiation, a known, harmful pollutant and toxin," and it's “acting with deliberate indifference to an obvious and pressing public health matter, all to serve, protect and advance industry rather than the people.”
In another filing Tuesday, groups representing California cities and counties warned against any changes that aren’t sensitive to the challenges they face. The NPRM “would, at best, pave the way to increase deployment in well-served, urbanized, profitable markets while high-cost, less dense regions would shoulder increased risks and fewer safeguards,” they said. “In many ways, this mirrors the experience of our jurisdictions where promises of quality service never materialize, but pressure to waive, override, and disregard minimum protections continue.”
Mayor Bruce Ehlers of Encinitas, California, said the proposed rules would “allow towers to be placed literally anywhere … with no say from my City Council nor our residents." That would be “unacceptable,” he argued. “We desire to maintain our control over [tower] locations, aesthetic impact, historic impact and removal when no longer in use.”
Officials from Schaumburg, Illinois said most siting delays aren’t the fault of the village. “Instead, they typically result from incomplete submittals, insufficient utility investigation, inconsistent drawings, or coordination challenges between wireless carriers, power providers, and fiber contractors.”
Consumers for Safe Cell Phones called the proposed rules “a blatant overreach” by the FCC. The proposals serve “the financial interests of the telecom industry at the expense of the public by virtually eliminating all local authority over the permitting/placement of biologically hazardous wireless transmitters.”