In tiny Medina, Washington, the picturesque lakefront community Bill Gates now calls home, a battle between residents and high-tech interests has been raging for nearly a year - but not over the Microsoft chairman's sprawling construction site.
Instead, the Telecommunications Act, which deregulated the telecom industry and was signed by President Clinton last February, has residents in Medina and in many other communities across the country in a fierce battle with wireless service providers. In a dramatic example of how national communications policy directly impacts small municipalities, this town of 3,000 residents is disputing the constitutionality of the Telecom Act.
Under the act, local jurisdictions must allow wireless services into their areas, and can no longer discriminate among providers. Meanwhile, as wireless carriers gear up for demand for personal communication services (PCS), the need for wireless antenna sites continues to increase. The only prerogative remaining to municipalities, under the law, is to determine where in the landscape the towers stand. You've gotta house 'em, say the feds; you decide where.
So why won't Medina mark the spots? Property values, and fear of health risks from the towers' electromagnetic fields, or EMFs. As a real estate agent in the area, Wendy Lister, wrote in a statement to the city, "The basic character of Medina is its charm, one that should not be punctuated with transmitting antennas and their visual pollution."
Residents agree. Last week, in the charming gray, wooden City Hall perched on the shores of Lake Washington, the Medina City Council passed a second six-month moratorium on granting tower permits to wireless providers. Medina has the courts on its side, too: In February, Sprint Spectrum challenged Medina's first moratorium in state court, claiming it was equivalent to a ban on wireless facilities, and that - in violation of the Telecom Act - it discriminated against newer carriers. The US District court ruled in favor of Medina, calling the moratorium an "appropriate zoning tool" for the city to revamp its ordinances in an effort to restrict the towers.
This time around, the town, which already has several towers and wireless service from two providers - USWest NewVector, and AT&T Wireless - plans to study whether the Telecom Act will "have effectively preempted local regulation of microwave and radio frequency emissions and whether such preemption is constitutional." It will also determine whether the wireless provisions in the Telecom Act amounts to a "an unlawful taking of property."
From the San Juan Islands to San Francisco to Mesquite, Texas, cities across America are enacting moratoriums to temporarily stem the construction of wireless towers. Or they are simply restricting the sites of the towers. Just across Lake Washington from Medina, the town of Mercer Island, home to Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is considering an ordinance that would do what the entire country of New Zealand has already done: ban wireless antennas from residential areas.
Meanwhile, wireless carriers consider the moratoriums a double standard, arguing that they cannot possibly meet current and future customer demand for wireless communications without adding more antennas. About 22,000 cellular towers dot the United States today, but an additional 100,000 may be needed by 2000, the Federal Communications Commission says - even though wireless companies now routinely share tower space. In Washington state, AT&T Wireless last year reported about a 30 percent increase in cell phone traffic - mostly in affluent areas around Puget Sound such as Medina and Mercer Island.
"The exact people who want cell phones are the ones who complain the most about the towers," says Doug Gunwaldson, director of common network access management at AT&T Wireless. "In Medina, the actual use is very high in proportion to the number of adults."
But local residents dispute that claim, saying that demand cannot possibly meet the number of towers companies want to put into their municipality.
"People are willing to not use their cell phones for three blocks on their way to the grocery store, if that means not having the towers here," says Susan Lawrence, Medina's leading opponent to the towers, and a cell phone owner. "Not everyone here is Bill Gates."
