Hi ,
Here is the follow up email for Friday, July 29th's National Call for Safe Technology.
If you'd like to see the recording, you can do so here: https://youtu.be/2K8NTaYntOE
First, it was asked if anyone attended the uly 22nd or 25th meetings listed below. If you were able to attend, please reply back to this email to let Odette know what was discussed.
Next, we talked about August 15, 2022 being the Nomination Deadline for EPA Seeking Nominations to Serve on the Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee (Federal Advisory Committee).
If you have anyone who you think would fit the criteria listed and understands the wireless issue too, please reach out to them for self nomination. We have two weeks to get this done!
Following the EPA nomination discussion, Odette went over current projects being worked on (names of those involved in each project listed below). These include:
- A Draft submission to the Upper Delaware Council in NYS regarding towers - Odette will be finished with this and we will be sending this out for sign-ons soon so keep your eyes peeled for that!
- EMS Guidelines [Floris, Hank, Mary, Nancy, Odette]
- A major editing/re-writing of Wikipedia page(s) on EMS: [Donna Ott; Hank Allen]
We then spoke at length regarding getting Gigi Sohn in as FCC Commissioner.
- Ellie Marks shared three separate documents of talking points with us (which we've attached to this email!), with Gigi's qualifications, a list of who currently supports her, and an approach for getting Manchin in West Virginia to back her nomination.
- In addition to Senator Manchin in West Virginia, there are few states/Senators which are critical:
- Schumer - NY
- Kelly - AZ
- Murkowski - AK
- Collins - ME
- Cortez & Matso - NV
- A couple pointers were mentioned when calling:
- When you call, ask for appointments person within their offices! - this is the individual who is in charge of nomination-type appointments (not the scheduler).
- Don't talk about health effects of wireless when trying to get support for Gigi. (just during the process of trying to get her on the FCC)
- We need them to vote on her for her qualifications, the fact that there is a 2-2 split and they need another person in there ASAP to get things done.
- Those who are in states with Democratic Senators also need to call/email, however the approach is that nominating Gigi is part of Biden's broadband agenda and they we need to support it by getting his appointees confirmed. It is their job as Democratic Senators. It could also be mentioned we need more women on the the FCC to these Senators.
- A great reminder from Catherine Dobbs, who offered to write a script for calls to Senators regarding Gigi:
Please email Ellie Marks at cabraintumor@gmail.com if you can help with getting support for Gigi in NY, AZ, ME, AK, or WV!
Mary Bauer shared exciting news that a planning commission in Loudoun County, Virginia denied both the special exception and planning commission permits for constructing a four ring, 150 foot, cell tower. The applicant was Milestone Towers and the proposed site was a 100-acre community sports park in the town of Middleburg, which happens to be owned by the Loudoun County School Board.
The main reason for this denial cited by the Commission was the tower developer’s refusal to grant an extension of time for the Commission to conduct a work session to answer all of the questions raised by the community.
These questions were substantial, and by not agreeing to an extension of time to address any new concerns raise, Milestone essentially forced a final vote and demonstrated a total lack of support for the community at this hearing.
You can see the video from this win here: https://youtu.be/gHF3D-RjZqE (It's almost 2 hours long)
Mary will update us with more details after the ten day appeal period is over.
Doris Knick from Wired Informed Networking (WIN) in Virginia then spoke about counties and school districts signing master lease agreements with site developers. This is expediting the tower rollout process - specifically in school districts - because once signed, these site developers seem to have more freedom to put towers up without a second thought.
You can read the article Doris wrote on this here: https://www.virginiafreedomkeepers.org/post/milestone-master-lease-madness
For example, Mary found out that with the school board in Loudoun County, there are about 100 towers that have been incorporated into the master lease agreement - and all subject to the same type of requirements (which is basically a 40-year lease that is hard to challenge once the site is added to it). This master lease was put into action around August 2020 and grandfathered in all of the older towers installed on Loudoun County school properties as
well.
The question is:
Is this happening in your state?!? Doris listed some states in her article, but everyone should be checking in their communities and school districts to see if there are master leases!
Our last speaker for the day was Mark Wahl, Director of Citizen League Encouraging Awareness of Radiation (CLEAR) in Whidbey Island, WA who spoke about his recent success with updating their communications ordinance!
Mark's journey started when he fought a cell phone tower and quickly realized his city had an outdated one-page telecommuications code written in 1997. Mark lobbied the city to update the code (which they voted to do) but then had some troubles figuring out who could be trusted to write it.
Mark got inspired by Andrew Mulnar in Ithica, NY (on the National Call for Safe Technology!) to look into Andrew Campanelli to write the new code. After finding out how much the rate was, Mark decided to try and skip the (slow) government process by offering to pay the $8,500 for Campanelli to write the new code. He then created a GoFundMe page to get community members to help.
You can view the GoFundMe Page here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/preserve-langleys-character-in-the-wireless-age
In a matter of five weeks, Mark had the money to donate it to pay for the codes to be written and two months later, Campanelli had the new ordinance completed and he was paid by the city from the money CLEAR had raised!
We will circulate the link for the ordinance when it's online and finalized, which should be in about three to four weeks. Now, Mark is working to get the same things done at the county level, and will hopefully be having Campanelli write their code as well.
Mark has created a new blueprint to be tried by us, and will be back in August to give some more of the ins and outs on how he got this all done - and of course answer any questions!
Congrats, Mark!
And finally, some information from the chat:
From Sidnee Cox: In Santa Rosa, AT&T has just removed their 12 permit applications for small cells. Here is what they stated: "There is currently an industry shift moving towards macro sites & the new C-band frequency for both coverage and capacity fill. As a result, AT&T determined that they no longer needed these small cell sites to fulfill their network needs at this time."
We REALLY need to focus on the macrotowers!
Ok that's all of the follow up, but expect back-to-back emails from us this week because we have a lot more to share!
Sincerely,
Jenny DeMarco
Virginians for Safe Technology
VirginiansforSafeTech@protonmail.com
Odette Wilkens
Wired Broadband, Inc.
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