A Colorado company that has been seeking to build a 120-foot 5G tower in Haines since January has again proposed to put it in a residential area.
Atlas Tower 1 is proposing using land owned by Roger Schnabel’s Highland Estate’s Inc., at 877 Young Road, to build a 2,500 square foot wireless facility providing what it calls “critical wireless coverage” to the surrounding area.
The company last requested to build the tower on a piece of land near 1 Mile on Lutak Road in mid-January.
If built, it would be Haines’ first 5G cell tower, which could dramatically improve download speeds for mobile devices.
But during a recent public hearing, planning commissioners got an earful from residents in the nearby neighborhood.
Most, like Haines High School technology coordinator Sam McPhetres, focused on how a communications complex would be out-of-character with the rest of the neighborhood.
“I’m all for bringing in technology, but one of my favorite games that I used to play was Sim City, and we would set up a community, and there was always a place for infrastructure in commercially zoned areas where you would put other things. And this is a neighborhood,” he said. “There’s lots of young families, there’s lots of established homes there, and having this communication tower is not a good idea at all.”
Others, like Kay Clement, said she thought the tower could have much better reach in other places in the community.
Still others, like David Thomas, echoed those arguments but also said they wanted to know more about the technology.
“I would like to request that the people that are applying for that permit, if they can give everybody that’s within that 500-foot zone, a complete description of the technologies that are going to be used in that tower and, kind of a little bit of a breakdown of what exactly that technology is. Not like a general ‘Oh, it’s going to be great.’ I just want an actual technological description of what’s going to be used, hardware and software [and] things like that.”
And some were wireless critics, pushing for borough leaders to learn more about the potential health risks of radio waves.
That includes assembly member Mark Smith, who is a practicing doctor. Smith told commission members about a range of illnesses that he said could be linked to electromagnetic fields, like those generated by cell phone towers.
The World Health Organization, and other health bodies have previously asserted that there are no known health risks from exposure to the low levels of radiofrequency people receive from cell phones, towers and 5G devices. That includes a recent WHO-backed literature review that found no link between brain cancer and mobile phones, a decades-old complaint among some cell-phone skeptics.
Still, there is not consensus on the science around potential impacts of cell phone towers. Though several regulatory agencies – including the FCC – have said that the 5G rollout doesn’t merit changing federal safety limits for cellphone-radiation exposure or network limits.
Smith said his opinion is that there has not been aggressive government oversight into the effects this type of radiation because “big pharma and CDC haven’t come up with a marketable cure,” he said. “What I call the death care industry, and I can say that because I’m a physician, thrives and profits from cures, not prevention. Additionally, the communications industrial complex is a powerful lobby exerting influence over elected officials through campaign donations, just like ‘Big Pharma’ does, often rendering those officials impotent.”
He said he believes that has undermined public and scientific discourse on the potential impacts of the radiation.
The planning commission ultimately agreed to meet on Dec. 12 at 6:30 p.m. to hold a full hearing on Atlas Tower’s latest proposal, though commissioner Patty Brown said that’s pending the company having enough time to answer questions posed by the commission.