By Robert Freeman
The Progress
rfreeman@theprogress.com
Feb 20 2007

Grassroots opposition to a proposed telecommunications tower on Yale Road West is reportedly growing and a public meeting is being organized for March 1 at the Chilliwack Best Western.

But organizer Greg Balzer says Telus officials and other industry proponents are being invited to the meeting to find a “cooperative” way to bring about “a good workable solution that keeps health and property values and alternatives in view.”

“We want everybody to be on the same page, to share their views,” he says.

Last month, city council approved a height variance for a 147-foot tower on an industrially-zoned property at 44325 Yale Rd. West. Mayor Clint Hames, presented later with a petition opposed to the tower, said the city has no regulatory authority over tower locations, which is under the jurisdiction of Industry Canada. However, he instructed city staff to clarify Industry Canada’s obligations for public consultation.

Not content with that action by the city, Balzer and others have been organizing.

Milt Bowling, a senior associate of a non-profit group based in Washington D.C., and a director of Risk Management Partners, says his research into the effects of cell phone towers on human health dates back to 1997.

He says he has helped organize hundreds of communities opposed to the cell phone towers - and there is more that can be done by Chilliwack’s city council.

“They can do what communities throughout the world have done - register their opposition to it,” he says. Ideally, the proposed tower would be scrapped and replaced by fibre optic cables, he says, but failing that the city could conduct its own risk assessment and recommend alternative sites.

Tower opponents claim a connection between exposure to microwave emissions and leukemia, DNA damage, short and long-term memory loss and buzzing in the ears.

Bowling says according to Health Canada, as long as the radiation emitted from a cellphone tower doesn’t raise body temperature by one degree Celsius in six minutes, it’s considered safe.

“As long as it doesn’t cook you it’s OK,” he says. “But what about all of the other risks involved.”

Only four towers have been scrapped due to community opposition, Bowling says, but many have been re-located to alternative sites.

Balzer says its hoped that Industry Canada can be convinced to change its rules to make identification of alternative sites mandatory in all future cell phone tower proposals.