NY residents sue for $100m over phone masts Residents are suing the Long Island town of Hempstead for allowing the installation of cell phone antennae, on the basis that it's lowering the value of their properties. The claim is not regarding the potential health risks, as has been the case before, but that the local authority has been negligent in preventing brown boxes …
by lack of services probably more like it.
Funny how our problems with contentious people "overly worried about everyone else reducing their property values" in the neighborhood cleared up when most of them got foreclosed on in the last six months. This concern has nothing to do with neighbors keeping things clean and neat and usually is a sign that a "house flipper" has moved into the neighborhood, someone who has no wish to contribute to the community over the long term. And foreclosed properties do more to ruin our property values do, than little brown boxes on phone poles.
- remove brown boxes
- remove cell towers
- remove "unsightly telegraph and utility poles" (and associated services and utilities)
- say very sorry
- pay a minimum damages fee
- turn a deaf ear to whinging home owners as they find themselves bereft of electricity and landline services, after all, because installing them would lower their property values
Bleeding idiots ...
I rather think that the residents of this "fine" town have more pressing and deadly reasons for the property prices that prevail than these brown boxes. I won't drive through the downtown area at night on a bet after the first (and last) time.
The Long Island lawyers are, however, not slow to recognise a possible money-spinner when they see one, as anyone who watches the USA channel (for NCIS reruns) can attest. There's a firm that runs umpteen adverts a night suggesting imaginitive ways you might have possibly suffered alleged injury or long-term sickness along with a kind and I'm sure philanthropic offer to "help seek redress".
How can they prove that these boxes are causing house prices to go down? For a start, the housing market is in a depression. And, in any case, advertising your town as a technical backwater with no telecommunications infrastructure is hardly likely to attract the nouveau riche into the area, is it?
People bitching about change qua change and doing their utmost to forestall the inevitable. This happens when people have way too much spare time on their hands, yet are subject to a relentless tide of technological and social change they have absolutely no influence over.
It's a very common brain fart: a lot of the anti-Obama rhetoric arises from this: what? a black man President? Ooooooh, change, social change; gotta resist it!
@frank ly, yes... some areas do have them...
1) If they're freaking over these boxes, they would throw a fit over them digging to bury the cables. This area could be quite old before burying was common.
2) Some parts of the country, the ground freezing and melting so much makes buried cables infeasible.
3) They may actually be power or other lines -- in some of our neighborhoods, power and cable are above ground, but telephone is buried. Why? I have no idea.
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I don't see the big deal over these boxes -- the poles are already not that great looking, who cares what's hanging off them.
What I *would* be concerned about were the UVerse boxes -- these are like 5 feet tall and 3 feet wide, and they tend to put them next to driveways, so a person backing out, instead of seeing if the street's clear they see this huge box and just have to hope there's no traffic. AT&T has been using the existing right-of-ways that previously had green boxes about the size of a traffic bollard, and apparently won't even move the box down a couple feet.
A box on a pole? I don't see the big deal. And clearly $100 million is an absurd amount to sue for even if they had merit.
you'd hope that something like an ultra-high-tech networky box would be designed to look... well, modern. All swooping shapes and decent quality plastic or pressed metal. I can't imagine a massive increase in price from "folded, pierced and riveted metal box" to "metal-lined (if neccesary) vacuum-formed / moulded 2-piece plastic case".
Equally, any salesperson worth their salt would be able to point out that due to "that small inobtrusive box over there" you've got a fantastic mobile phone signal- no dropped calls, no missed SMSes, and even a longer battery life as the phone lowers its output the closer it gets to the base station. You could even argue that if microwaves from mobiles are dangerous you're making it less dangerous for the same reason. Even better, unlike some other phone operators the box is up high rather than on the pavement, meaning fewer obstructions and greater safety for kids riding along not watching where they're going.
With a good salesperson and a techy/sufficiently confused or FUDed-about-mobiles customer you could probably squeeze another $1,000 out of just having this box sat there.
Additionally- it's in a tree or on a pole. From Google Earth it doesn't look like it's interrupting beautiful scenery or anything.
'Tis funny, (I suppose the "mast debate" joke keeps it alive) but it's the BTS/BS/Node-B (at the base of the tower) that generates the power. The antennas at the pinnacle radiate. Away from the base/mast/whatever*.
The mast only gets old war-veterans to salute it if there's a flag at the top. Before their own flag is flying at half-staff.
*So, sticking it across the road from a school, rather than on the top of it exposes the kids to more of the UNharmful RF. Think Homer Simpson. Think Doughnuts. Think trainspotting. Think about "wouldn't it be marvellous if I had a fuc*king life (or ever even had had a fuc*k)".
... to pay for the lawsuit! The council could always buy a tiny bit of backyard to someone and erect a bloody big mast and be done with those 'ugly, brown, unobtrusive, low-hanging fruit boxes'.
'Hey, why won't the council patch these big-ass holes in the street? Pick up the trash (rubbish) every 2 weeks? Cracked sidewalks (footpaths)? When they gonna put a new bulb in the street lamp - it's dark here.' Because they had to pay a bunch of lawyers and loose $m's in court.
Around Atlanta we had some people complaining about towers, and the "solution" was to put some shoddy decorations on them to make them "look like trees" - resulting in something far uglier than the towers had been.
http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM5CE9
Serves those whiners right. Electronics scattered about is just part of the modern landscape, particularly in a city.
Let's see, on my street there are various shapes and sized boxes on most lawns for cable TV, electric wires on poles with huge transformers here and there, fire hydrants every few houses, and quite a few lawn ornaments that are not to everyone's taste. The only break we get is that the telephone system is mostly underground, but a few more boxes pop up here and there for it. I'm not sure a few brown boxes would even be noticed. Best they all have a beer.
You're talking about people who would read the Fail or the Excess if they lived in the UK. You can tell this because they are (1) obsessed with house prices and (2) opposed to any and all change.
Last year on our street the streetlights were replaced with new, brighter lights. This meant we ended up with much better lighting and fewer lamposts (and lower CO2 emissions for the Grauniad readers at number 4). In order to achieve the best spread of lighting some of the lamposts were moved. As a result we had some neighbours who threatened to take action against the local authority for taking their lampost away. And others threating to take action against the local authority for putting a new lampost outside their house. It would have made an interesting case.
In these cases I believe the best course of action for the LA to take is to offer to put things back exactly as they were. It would satisfy the court and totally piss off the complainants. And of course if the complainants complained further this would demonstrate that the suit was speculative or frivolous which probably amount to contempt.
I may sue someone for being endangered and stressed when the cable going up a pole just a short distance from my property, got flames shooting out of it.
Then the transformer across the street went bang , and a fire engine turned up.
Plus the deprivation of having no power for a few hours.
The twitch I got was almost like when a force 6..8 earthquake with epicentre about 20 km away , that we had a couple of years ago.
It's all true I tell you.
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