EDITORIAL: How localities can regulate cell towers

In our hyperconnected culture, the dropped call and the "No Service" message on a cell phone screen are ever-more annoying realities. But we don't seem happy about the remedy: more cell towers, for wider coverage and more capacity. That technological dilemma is unfolding in town and village halls across Long Island.

The problem is that the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 limits how towns can regulate cell phone carriers and the companies that build their towers. Still, there are things municipalities can - and should - do.

To respond to concerns of citizens objecting to proposed new facilities, towns need to pass carefully crafted legislation. The goal is to make the carriers prove need and to encourage collocation: placing new transmitters on existing towers, instead of erecting new ones. And towns need to get expert advice on how the 1996 act affects them. Southold and Hempstead, for example, are doing just that.

'Frankenpines' and health scares

Some objections are based on the aesthetics of the transmitters, which can range in appearance from the invisible (hidden in a church steeple) to the hideous (fake trees so ugly they have been dubbed "Frankenpines.")

But many concerns are rooted in unproven claims of the dangers of electromagnetic radiation. There's no definitive scientific finding that transmitters are harmful. The phones, held close to the head, are a likelier source of worry. The Food and Drug Administration is studying phones, but determining whether there is harm is still a long way off.

Still, some people will keep worrying about radiation, from phones or transmitters. So towns should make sure that proposed new towers - or new transmitters on existing towers - meet Federal Communications Commission emission standards. But as long as facilities meet the standards, towns can't reject them for health reasons. The federal act won't allow it.

That's not all the statute prohibits. Towns can't just sit on applications forever or give preferential treatment to one carrier over another. Nor can they exclude facilities by enacting excessively tight zoning restrictions. It's already been established, for example, that a town that's almost entirely residential can't get away with banning them from residential areas.

The approach in Hempstead's new legislation, scheduled for a town board vote later this month, is more nuanced. It sets up a list of seven priorities for siting. The most preferred priority is placement on existing towers on town or other public property. The least preferred is new towers in residentially zoned areas.

That's a sensible approach. Hempstead is a big town with a lot of publicly owned and nonresidential land. So it would be tough for a carrier to argue successfully in court that the town is being unfairly restrictive.

The Hempstead ordinance also requires carriers to demonstrate that the new facility will have "the least adverse visual effect on the environment." And it sets up detailed criteria for the carrier to demonstrate the need for additional coverage.

Need is not a simple issue. It's not just about coverage, the ability to get a cell signal in a given area. It's also about capacity, the system's ability to transmit the increasingly heavy load of data and call volume.

The soaring demand

There's no question that demand for cell phone service will keep increasing. One factor is the rise of smart phones, with their data-heavy activities, such as downloading movies. Another is the rising number of people giving up landlines and relying solely on cell phones. And carriers want to provide enough capacity to meet spikes in usage, such as the flood of drive-time calls from people stuck in traffic.

All this demand creates dilemmas. The carriers are stuck between their customers' desire for better service and the towns' demands that companies prove need. The towns are caught between voters' aversion to towers and the limits that federal law places on local control of siting.

Most towns don't have the in-house expertise to navigate that maze. So they need expert help. Southold signed a municipal telecommunications consultant, the Center for Municipal Solutions, and amended parts of its existing legislation. Hempstead hired the same center, which helped draw up its pending legislation. Whatever consultant a town chooses, carriers have to pay for them to analyze wireless applications, just as developers have to pay the cost of environmental impact studies.

That's what the future of wireless regulation will look like. As long as we use cell phones more and more, not just to make simple phone calls, but to download a lot of data, we'll need greater capacity and coverage. And that will create controversy.

The role of municipalities is to make the carriers play by the rules. The role of citizens is to hold local government accountable, but not to expect the impossible. Good service requires more capacity. There's no way around that iron rule of our constantly connected modern era. hN