Cell Tower Forum Set For Dec 2

LITCHFIELD — The Berkshire-Litchfield Environmental Council (BLEC), along with eight prominent environmental organizations, has organized a conference on telecommunications technologies and their impact on communities.

Called “Cell Towers: State of the Science/State of the Law,” the all-day forum will be held on Saturday, December 2, from 8:45 am to 4:30 pm, at the Education Connection in Litchfield. Its purpose is to help citizens, local governments, planners and zoners, and municipal attorneys better understand the complex issues of tower and antenna siting.

A panel of scientists, government officials, engineers, and attorneys had been organized by BLEC in response to the numerous applications affecting the towns.

“The initial buildout of this technology occurred in the Metropolitan areas along highway corridors,” said BLEC President Starling Childs, who is also on the faculty of the Yale Forestry School. “Now rural areas are seeing a flood of applications, often from companies that are in the vertical real estate business – not the providers of the services,” he added.

“Local zoning boards are hard pressed to know what to do, and citizens have legitimate questions about the safety of the technology. We thought it was time to bring in a higher level of expertise. The people we’ve assembled are almost never available at the local level. It’s more complicated, unfortunately, than just hiding antennas in church steeples.”

BLEC sponsored a similar forum in 1996.

Confirmed speakers include Dr Carl Blackman, senior scientist in bioelectromagnetics at the  US Environmental Protection Agency; Dr Robert Cleveland, senior scientist at the Federal Communications Commission’s Office of Engineering & Technology; Dr Albert Manville, a wildlife biologist specializing in bird kills and tower heights at the US Fish and Wildlife Service; Dr Henry Lai, senior scientist at the University of Washington’s Department of Bioengineering in Seattle – the country’s oldest bioelectromagnetics research laboratory; Dr Andrew Marino, an attorney and professor of bioelectromagnetics at Louisiana State University School of Medicine and at the Department of Bioengineering at Louisiana Tech University; and Dr William Curry, retired research physicist at Argonne National Research Laboratories and current consultant at EMSciTek.

Also confirmed on the legal/legislative panel is Whitney North Seymour, Jr, of Landy & Seymour in New York City. A former US District Attorney for New York and founder of the National Resources Defense Council, Mr Seymour recently filed a petition at the US Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the Telecommunications Act. Attorney James Hobson, a telecommunications specialist at Miller & Van Eaton in Washington, DC, and a former FCC official, will also speak, as well as Edward Barron, deputy chief counsel for US Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who has helped write legislation to reverse the Telecom Act and fund research.

Other speakers include Joel Rinebold, Executive Director of the Connecticut Siting Council; Jeff Anzevino, Regional Planner for Scenic Hudson, Inc., an environmental organization in the Hudson Valley; radio-frequency engineers Mark Hutchins from Brattleboro, Vt., and Raymond Kasevich of KAI Technologies in Great Barrington, Mass.; Connecticut legislators Andrew Roraback and Philip Prelli; and former New York Times journalist/author B. Blake Levitt.

Co-sponsors of the forum include The Nature Conservancy, Housatonic Valley Association, Berkshire Natural Resources Council, Sharon Audubon, Scenic Hudson, Lake Watch, Orion Afield, and the E.F. Schumacher Society.

Seating is limited. Pre-registration is requested. Admission is $35 and includes lunch if registration is made by November 25. To register, call Judy Saverine at Education Connection, Rte 63, Litchfield, Conn., at 860/567-0863. For program information, call 860/435-2004.