In Ashland, a cell phone company hopes to install a dozen antennas on top of a water tank. Another carrier has plans for a Natick rooftop. National Grid proposes a new tower in Northborough, saying another one nearby is full.
The wireless communication industry says it spends an average $28.8 billion a year upgrading infrastructure nationwide, and one needs only to look up to see some of that investment taking place in MetroWest.
By any account, demand for cell phones has exploded in the last two decades. But towers and antennas that provide that service still face local opposition, with neighbors sometimes worried about aesthetics, property values and health.
For municipalities, cell towers still present a difficult balancing act. Federal law says towns and cities have to allow wireless companies to provide coverage, and it also bars them from using health concerns to deny a project.
Yet local officials have siting and permitting authority, giving them some say in the location and appearance of towers.
“It’s a bit of a tennis game,” said Patrick Reffett, community development director in Natick.
For cash-strapped municipalities, leasing space for wireless equipment can be a moneymaker. In Ashland alone, cell providers pay $170,000 a year for antennas on municipal sites, an amount that increases 3 percent annually, Assistant Town Manager Mark Purple said last week.
A Verizon Wireless proposal for 12 new antennas on a Cedar Street water tank could mean another $24,000.
“It’s been a very good, consistent source of revenue for us,” Purple said.
It’s difficult to pinpoint the number of cell towers and antenna arrays in MetroWest. A Federal Communications Commission (FCC) database only records antennas taller than 200 feet, on historic sites, near airports or in certain migratory bird flight paths, a spokesman said.
The state does not record or generally regulate such towers.
An industry trade group – CTIA, the Wireless Association – says cell sites, where wireless antennas and network communications equipment are placed, more than doubled nationwide since 2000, from 104,288 to 242,130 last year.
Nationally, wireless subscribers also doubled from 109.5 million in 2000 to 207.9 million in 2005, CTIA reported. That number hit 270.3 million last year.
Among carriers expanding locally is MetroPCS, which began building a New England network last year.
Mike Murphy, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless, said the biggest driver in upgrades for his company is growth in data transmitted with phones – “using your wireless phone to surf the Internet, using your wireless phone to upload or download files,” he said.
“I think you’re always trying to balance additional coverage … with also increasing capacity on your existing infrastructure,” Murphy said.
Local battles over cell towers seem to have waned compared to past years as carriers merge or are more willing to put equipment on shared locations, said Geoffrey Beckwith, executive director of the Mass. Municipal Association. Still, towns dealing with towers face conflicting demands, he said.
“The public on one hand is looking for uninterrupted wireless service, but on the other hand has very legitimate concerns about making sure there is not a disproportionate impact” on neighborhoods, he said.
The MMA has fought past proposals to take local permitting authority away from town and cities, Beckwith said. “The only way to make sure that the carriers are responsive to local needs is to make sure that communities are empowered to have the authority to set the conditions,” he said.
This area has seen its share of recent cell site proposals.
Marlborough officials earlier this year rejected an Omnipoint proposal for a tower, while Verizon and AT&T have sought to expand service in the city. Last fall, the Framingham Zoning Board of Appeals shot down an Omnipoint plan for a 100-foot pole in St. George’s Cemetery.
“It just wasn’t an appropriate place,” said Phillip Ottaviani, a ZBA member.
Hudson fielded proposals for two towers last summer. In Natick, Reffett said he asked a cell carrier last week to redesign a plan for equipment on top of an 11 South Main St. building, which has other antennas on its roof.
“(It) just had no aesthetic prerogative built into it whatsoever,” Reffett said of the new proposal.
National Grid’s Northborough proposal for a 150-foot monopole has some neighbors worried the tower could harm their property values, but that can be tough to pin down.
“It’s a hard thing to prove when you have a volatile market anyway,” Reffett said.
Some Northborough neighbors also worry that electromagnetic fields emitted by towers – a form of non-ionizing radiation, like that used by AM and FM radio, microwaves and infrared heat lamps – pose a health risk.
An American Cancer Society report says it’s unlikely towers cause cancer, a view the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency echo. But the society also says cell towers are a relatively new technology, and we do not yet have full information.
The CTIA points to other organizations also indicating no clear evidence of health risks, including the World Health Organization.
But some concerned residents remain unconvinced. Leslie Githens, an Ashland Board of Health member who spoke during a hearing on the Northborough proposal, said there are few recent U.S. studies on cell towers.
She pointed to other studies overseas, such as a 2004 Israeli report suggesting higher cancer rates in people who live near cell towers.
Githens said she would like U.S. physicians to review other studies to see if they have merit, saying essentially, “the jury is still out.”
“I believe in being cautious when it comes to people’s health,” she said.
Richard Clapp, an environmental health professor at Boston University, said any health risks of cell towers are “not a settled question.”
It’s not that towers should be banned, he said, but he suggested an approach of “prudent avoidance.”
“I guess I would say we don’t know, but why put them next to places where young children live or especially where they go to school?” he said.
Anti Electromagnetic Radiation
