By Charly SHELTON

After several meetings, reviews, meetings, public outreach sessions, meetings, presentations and even the occasional meeting, the long awaited and much debated AT&T cell site is finally approved. On Aug. 7, the Los Angeles County Dept. of Regional Planning approved Project Number 2017-007380-(5), Conditional Use Permit Number RPPL2017011133. This permit allows AT&T’s contractor Eukon Group to attach a small cell site to the telephone pole just north of 4704 Briggs Ave. in La Crescenta.

This issue stretches back to 2014 for La Crescenta and even earlier for other communities along the Foothills. For years, AT&T has been trying to get approval to build a new cell tower in the Crescenta Valley. Proposed sites for the tower have ranged from maintenance yards to residential streets to even Dunsmore Park. But each time the issue comes up, the proposal is knocked down in the face of strong rebuke from the public, citing an issue with the electromagnetic frequency power thrown off by the equipment in use. The first tower proposal in 2014 was denied. The second tower proposal in 2016 was also denied. But the 2018 tower proposal was different, specifically because it wasn’t a tower at all. Whereas the other proposals wanted a new structure built at 80 feet tall, the newest proposal calls for a small cell antenna. Roughly two feet tall and one foot wide, this cylindrical antenna provides strong coverage for users within 500 feet of the installation and less strong coverage dropping away from the site.

“The small cells that we’re working on right now are going to be the backbone of 5G, which is the next standard that’s going to be coming out,” said Adrian Culici of the Eukon Group in his presentation at the April 30 meeting of the Crescenta Valley Town Council’s Land Use Committee. “[2019 will see the debut of most of the network infrastructure] then it will take a couple of years for iPhones and Galaxy Samsung phones to be 5G compatible. But hold onto your hats because it’s going to be pretty amazing! The latencies are going to be so much lower that they’ll be able to perform robotic surgery over 5G networks from across the world – that’s the kind of accuracy we’re talking about here. We’re going to need a lot more of these [small cells] and it needs to be able to keep up.”

The Land Use Committee meeting saw no opposition from any of the neighbors near the installation site, in part because of the short notice says one neighbor. Rola Masri lives just north of the affected area on Briggs Avenue and, although she was notified, she didn’t see the notice until the day before the meeting and couldn’t make it in time. Despite not speaking out at the LUC meeting, she is still very much against the cell tower.

“Mainly for health reasons, which is something [the Los Angeles County Dept. of Regional Planning] can’t even consider when making decisions on this. I’m very much against it because there’s so much science out there now, and it’s really the independent science that we look at, that’s showing a lot of [negative] health effects. This 5G [network] is going to force putting cell towers in front of people’s homes whether they want it or not,” Masri said. “I don’t think that’s fair and I don’t think that’s American.”

The Dept. of Regional Planning, as Masri referenced, is not allowed to take public health concerns into account when making their decisions. According to the approval letter, “Federal law prohibits the
County from considering potential health effects from [wireless telecommunications facilities] in taking a discretionary action on a wireless [conditional use permit] as long as the facilities comply with Federal Communications Commission’s regulations.”

Some sources allege that too much electromagnetic frequency (EMF) from electronic devices has been linked to cancer, headaches and other health hazards. Masri argued that because FCC personnel are engineers and it does not employ medical professionals they are not qualified to set the standard regulations for healthy levels of exposure to EMF emissions.

At the LUC presentation, Eukon Group presented a study done of the new small cells by an independent third-party firm. The small cell is much more energy efficient than the full tower and therefore throws out much less energy. The FCC regulates the intensity EMF output and determined a safe level for unlimited exposure to be 1.00 mW/cm2.

After hiring Hammet & Edison Inc., an outside testing firm, to measure and evaluate the safety of the proposed small cell equipment at ground level, it was found to output 0.0056 mW/cm2, or just 0.56% of the safe acceptable levels. At a second story height, the level is 0.88% of the safe acceptable levels. That is less than 1% in either case.

Other concerns were raised aside from EMFs including a reduction in property values to setting a precedent for other wireless carriers to install future facilities in the neighborhood to making the utility poles unsafe hazards during a windstorm.

“We have strong winds in La Crescenta. Trees fall over in La Crescenta. There’s a chance the small cell could fly off, or break and fall in a high wind, because [the cell] is located on a telephone pole along a north-south street. The winds tend to channel down on these north-south streets and, in our area we had a tree on Ramsdell Avenue that toppled over, and that was on a north-south street,” said Marilyn Tyler, a local resident who has fought AT&T before when a previous proposal suggested a tower be installed near her property off of Pennsylvania Avenue.

In addition, Tyler said, the small cell could throw the whole utility pole off-balance and cause it to fall over in a wind event. Between of this safety concern and the reduction in property values, she is also against the installation.

Harry Leon, president of the Crescenta Valley Town Council, was present at the Aug. 7 hearing that saw the approval of the 4704 Briggs site. He said that, although his professional opinion would be in favor of the newer technology, his constituents have made their voices heard at CVTC meetings and he is in opposition on their behalf.

“Yes, we need 5G and all that stuff because we want to upgrade but, as a Council, we represent the [area]. We don’t represent corporations. So always my opinion will go with respect to the decisions of what my community wants,” Leon said. “If the residents are against it, it’s my job to relay the voices of the residents. I speak for my community, and they didn’t want it.”

Following a discussion at the May 17 meeting of the CVTC, the Council sent a letter to the Dept. of Regional Planning with no recommendation in either direction. Two voted in favor, two in opposition and two abstained. In the end, the permit was approved and there is now an appeal period before the decision is cemented. For anybody opposed to the installation, appeals can be delivered in person to Regional Planning Commission, Attn: Commission Secretary, Room 1350, Hall of Records, 320 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. The phone number for scheduling is (213) 974-6409. Appeals are due no later than Aug. 21.

  Charly Shelton