Residents Cry Out Against ‘Invasion’
By Harold Egeln
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BAY RIDGE – Trying to ward off what they call an “invasion” of potentially hazardous cell phone towers atop apartment buildings, angry Bay Ridge residents appealed to their Community Board 10 for help at a recent meeting.
More than 20 such arrays are already in place with five more coming, according to board officials, making Bay Ridge the cell phone tower center of Brooklyn.
“I found a flyer by my building’s elevator about a cell tower antenna installation and noticed a crane on the street outside. Then, 24 hours later, the array was installed,” said David Stewart, a resident of a co-op apartment building at 8701 Shore Road. “I live on the sixth floor, so there are just about right over my head. I and many people in my building are concerned.”
Their worries center on possible health effects from microwave radiation transmission exposures, especially since Stewart said he has a possible pre-cancer condition that doctors are carefully watching. The cell phone towers were installed in mid-August, he said, speaking at the board’s public session at the Shore Hill Community Room.
“There’s no notice. They just go up,” said Elisa Cafaro, an 87th Street resident who lives across from the building. She mentioned an array that was placed on a building at 8701 Ridge Blvd. directly across 87th Street from P.S. 185, site of a protest meeting and two marches of parents and children to the local Verizon Wireless outlet earlier this year.
“I have two young daughters, 7 and 2,” Cafaro said. “They [the P.S. 185 parents] fought with Verizon for a year to move the towers, and they’re still there. Now they come across the street from my daughters’ bedroom. They are literally facing my children’s bedroom. I feel we’re guinea pigs for Verizon.”
A registered nurse who works at Sloan Kettering Hospital, Jennifer Kokozakis of 87th Street has two young children and is now pregnant again. Doctors at her hospital told her there is concern about cancer with the towers.
There is “no proof” that the arrays are “not dangerous” to people’s health, said Barbara Light, a resident of the co-op building, noting that there have been contradictory but no conclusive studies about much-discussed public health threats.
Verizon Wireless spokespersons, in their statements, have said repeatedly that the cell phone antenna transmitters and receivers are no more dangerous than everyday radio and television signals, and that people should checks the facts thoroughly and not rely on what floats around on the Internet.
Board 10 Chair Dean Rasinya said that the community board is not usually notified of an installation. “Most of the time, the truck shows up and they’re up.”
The community board office constantly gets calls about cell phone towers, said District Manager Josephine Beckmann.
Actions Advised to Halt
Cell Tower ‘Invasion’
“Cell phone towers are proliferating at a disgusting rate,” said Assemblywoman Janele Hyer-Spencer, a longtime children’s rights advocate. “I sponsored legislation on guidelines in the state assembly, and State Senator Marty Golden has done so in the state Senate. But we’re under serious limitations. We are hamstrung by what we can do in prohibiting them. We are really hamstrung with respect to notification qualifications.”
The responsibility is with Congress, she said. “The Federal Communications Act is most difficult to circumvent,” she explained. “We must have action at federal levels. My bill would limit towers by footage and height. Specifically, we are not allowed to claim health as a reason to prohibit towers.”
To the concerns of residents at the co-op building at 8701 Shore Road and others, Hyer-Spencer advised, “You are dealing with a private entity, a corporation. I urge you to take your concerns right to them.”
Councilman Vincent Gentile, who has been active at the city level, also noted the restrictions on legislation in the City Council, which prohibit state and local bills from raising potential health issues. “We’ve called on the federal government to rescind the Federal Communications Act of 1996 on these prohibitions,” he said. “We cannot regulate the agencies.”
In the council, Gentile said, pending legislation would require the city Department of Buildings (DOB) to notify both the local community board and council member every time a cell tower is applied for, “allowing us the time to organize opportunities to stop this. We’ve got to regulate the agencies.”
During the first protests at P.S.185, Verizon Wireless informed Bay Ridge officials that Bay Ridge and Manhattan’s Upper West Side, which are among the city’s neighborhoods that have the most towers, are ideally suited for the arrays because of environmental conditions and wide avenue traffic patterns.
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© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2008
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