Colonia residents oppose cell phone tower plan for Inman Avenue at Jordan Road
T-Mobile has proposed installing a cell phone tower behind a strip of businesses on Inman Avenue at Jordan Road. Staff photo: Joe McLaughlin
WOODBRIDGE, NJ – Dozens of Colonia residents are mobilizing opposition against a cell phone tower T-Mobile has proposed for the corner of Inman Avenue and Jordan Road.
The company says the 120-foot pole is necessary to fill a gap in its wireless coverage map. But residents, some of whom have lived near the intersection for more than 30 years, fear adverse affects that the tower’s six microwave antennae would have on both their health and their property values.
A zoning board hearing on the issue has been scheduled for Sept. 23, although T-Mobile may request a postponement before then, the board secretary said Wednesday.
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The federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 bars local agencies from blocking a cell phone tower on health concerns when the tower’s microwave radiation levels are below the exposure limits established by the Federal Communications Commission. The zoning board can reject the application if its merits are not enough to outweigh the neighborhood’s zoning restrictions.
Michael Knef, whose Farrell Avenue home is two blocks from the site, is undaunted by the federal rules.
“They say there is nothing you can do because the federal government says it’s not bad for you and you’ve got to live with it, but I’m hoping for hundreds of people to show up at the meetings,” he said.
“It’s going to lower our property values,” said Cal Bergenfeld, whose Jordan home faces he proposed site behind the post office. “I hope the zoning board has enough sense to see that there are health concerns. If it’s safe, why not put it behind a school?”
T-Mobile, with 33 million subscribers, is one of the nation’s largest cell phone carriers. As cell phone companies’ networks expand, so too must the number of cell phone towers, which numbered at about 250,000 last year, according to the wireless trade association CTIA.
T-Mobile has faced opposition in Montgomery, where it has proposed erecting a tower near a housing development, and in Scotch Plains, where a 125-foot tower would rise over the graves at the historic Hillside Cemetery. A 125-foot T-Mobile tower application for fire department properly also is being opposed in Bridgewater. Carteret, on the other hand, recently approved a Verizon Wireless and MetroPCS for vacant municipal land in a deal that will net the borough tens of thousands of dollars a year.
Alex Rudnicki, whose parents’ property would border the cell tower site, which is owned by a strip mall, said he’s a T-Mobile customer and doesn’t “think they have any trouble with reception here.”
The 22-year-old cites studies linking cell phone radiation to health risks and lower property values but admits the wireless industry can point to studies saying the opposite.
Real estate experts have written that cell phone towers can diminish a home’s value by 15 percent, but a 2007 Florida real estate study measured just a 2 percent decline. A study published by the British Medical Journal in June found no higher risk of cancer among children born from mothers who lived near cell towers. Meanwhile, a 10-year study released in May said the link between cell phone use and brain cancer was inconclusive.
But no studies will assuage Knef and his neighbors.
“What does the cell phone tower do for us?” he said. “All it benefits is T-mobile, the property owner (leasing the space for the tower) and people driving down the road who shouldn’t even be on a cell phone.”