If cell towers are considered unsafe for Wanaque then all the mobile operators should agree to remove all coverage from there. It's the only responsible thing to do.
T-Mobile US drags New Jersey borough to court over school cell tower permit denial
T-Mobile US is taking the borough of Wanaque in New Jersey to court for refusing to approve the company's plans to build a cell tower. In a complaint [PDF] filed last week, T-Mob accused the Wanaque borough of rejecting its application to build a cell tower on invalid grounds. The cell tower in question is to be built on part …
COMMENTS
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Tuesday 18th June 2024 21:06 GMT CorwinX
It would be amusing if the operators got together
... decided to accept the towns concerns and pulled all coverage. As a test case.
You think mobiles/masts are a danger? No worries, we've decomissioned our towers, mobiles don't work in your town anymore and your children are safe.
You do all have landlines and/or nearby payphones don't you?
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Tuesday 18th June 2024 16:41 GMT martinusher
TMobile is correct, but...
There's 101 reasons why TMobile is right but it won't make any difference, you just can't fight ignorance with reason. The same people who go on about the cancer creating properties of cell towers (and particularly '5G') also tend to be the first to complain when their cell coverage is sub-par. They also tend to be the people who find the highest power WiFi access point they can to ensure streaming coverage.
You just can't fix stupid. Leave a nice big coverage hole for them. It would also be a good idea for America in general to fix its educational system -- there's a chronic shortage of specialist science and math teachers, a situation that's been festering for years leaving generations as prey to pseudo-science. (So its ironic in a way that a school should be at the center of this problem...)
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Tuesday 18th June 2024 16:47 GMT Mishak
"You just can't fight ignorance with reason"
Exactly.
How many of these objectors allow their kids to have a phone?
And how many then understand that the RF field strength to which the child is exposed from the handset is much, much greater than from that great big ol' mast on top of the building?
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Tuesday 18th June 2024 18:09 GMT hedgie
Re: TMobile is correct, but...
Seriously. It's a good thing that I'm not one of T-Mobile's people there because I would be extremely tempted at the meeting to put a fake tower in the room and then point out that it's not even plugged in once the morons started faking symptoms. I'd definitely be a PR liability.
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Wednesday 19th June 2024 15:20 GMT hedgie
Re: TMobile is correct, but...
I'm afraid that you are 100% correct there. Critical thinking really isn't taught in school to most students, even in "good" schools. I was fortunate enough to take "Intro to Logic"[1], but it was my final year at school, and they were very selective about which students *could* take it, maybe 30 kids out of about 200 at that grade level. Now, 17-18 is a bit old to really start teaching critical thinking, and when it's an elective that only a relative few can even take, a mere 15% of students already privileged enough to have their tuition paid for[2] the percentage of the general population with such essential education is even more abysmal. The educational system, in the US at least, is largely set up to *keep* people stupid and ignorant, but perhaps with the skills necessary for entering the workforce.
I've certainly been called elitist for quipping that it's still September 1993[3], but there really were substantial changes a few years later when what was formerly the domain of nerds, academics, and military people with some degree of cluefulness became outnumbered thousands to one by pond life. Now, most places online are textbook examples of lunatics running the asylum, and overrun with what can no longer be called trolls, because they actually *believe* the shite they're spewing. El Reg at its worst is far better than most.
[1] Private school, and they had an arrangement with the local community college to have a teacher who worked at both institutions to do one daily course at the High School that I attended for credit at both.
[2] At least as a Catholic school, they did make arrangements with less affluent families to do community service in exchange for lower tuition.
[3] Shyness and being an early teen before then meant I wasn't really posting, but was starting to poke around and lurk.
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Wednesday 19th June 2024 03:47 GMT veti
Re: TMobile is correct, but...
The problem is, they're not even trying to "fight ignorance with reason". They're trying to stop the "expert witness" from testifying, they're saying "health concerns are not up for discussion". They are, quite aggressively and proactively, trying to shut down any debate before it happens.
That's never a good look, no matter how open-and-shut your case is. I mean, I understand their reasons, but... they need to realise this is a political issue. And relying on purely legal tactics in a political battle is a losing formula, because politics trumps law.
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Wednesday 19th June 2024 10:25 GMT Jon 37
Re: TMobile is correct, but...
T-Mobile could bring it's own health experts. There would be a lot of them.
This would take a lot of time, cost a lot of money, and waste the time of a bunch of real experts.
Then T-Mobile could repeat that for the next town council that does this, and the next, and...
And it sounds like the council would just ignore those experts anyway, they have already decided to believe the conspiracy theory.
That would be very expensive and a total waste of everyone's time. And as T-Mobile pointed out, the council isn't allowed to take that into consideration anyway.
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Thursday 20th June 2024 02:29 GMT veti
Re: TMobile is correct, but...
Expensive? Yep, absolutely. And then they should factor that into what they charge for service. It's increasingly becoming a cost of doing business for the whole industry.
But "the council isn't allowed to take that into consideration"? Are you even being serious right now? The council, which is elected, isn't allowed to ask the questions that a lot of its voters want asked? That, my friend, is exactly where conspiracy theories come from. They're actively feeding the paranoia.
Would the council ignore those experts anyway? Okay, then that's their decision to make. Then T-Mobile can take out a few ads at election time explaining exactly why you can't get coverage in their city.
And would you have to repeat this in the next city, and the next, and...? Well, yes, probably, for a while. But it would get easier, if it's what the people really want. If good cell coverage is really the priority of the people, then councils would start to take note of what happened to those who opposed it. (And if that's not their priority, then - fine, that's valuable information too. Stop trying so hard.) But if it is, the victory would be won. For reals.
Trying to use the law to shut down debate? That never ends well. If they're very, very lucky it might not bite them in the arse right here, but it will totally catch up with them sooner or later. And then there will be real trouble.
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Thursday 20th June 2024 17:17 GMT doublelayer
Re: TMobile is correct, but...
"But "the council isn't allowed to take that into consideration"? Are you even being serious right now? The council, which is elected, isn't allowed to ask the questions that a lot of its voters want asked?"
There is a reason it's not a local issue and why there are legal limits to it. If I convince someone that something which we all know isn't dangerous is dangerous, does it automatically become their right to do what they want about it? Stupidity has to be limited in a variety of ways. That means that the rules of what constitutes water safety is made at a higher level, so that neither the chemical company saying "let us dump or we'll fire you all" and the person saying "someone told me that dehydrogen monoxide is deadly so we must get all of it out of our pipes" get to decide what they want to do. It means that what is a crime gets defined at a higher level, so a group of sufficiently motivated neighbors can't define insufficient yard maintenance as a felony (sadly, there are some people who might want to). And it means that electrical safety is defined at a higher level and that if you think that it's wrong, you don't get to redefine something safe as dangerous, even in your local town. If you want to redefine that, go get a job at the FCC, but expect that people will prevent someone as ignorant as that from getting there because they have actual work to do.
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Wednesday 19th June 2024 21:38 GMT Trigonoceps occipitalis
Re: TMobile is correct, but...
“Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.”
Jonathan Swift
“Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.”
Karl Popper
"A total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through."
Melchet (Stephen Fry) Black Adder IV
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Tuesday 18th June 2024 17:37 GMT HammerOn1024
So!
A bunch of board members, who probably ALL have cell phones (As I point my finger at each in turn and say "According to YOU, YOU are killing children!"), are stealing money? Yeah, I'd sue for back rent, loss of use, loose of revenue, legal costs and breach of contract. Bidding would start at $100 million and EACH of these so-called "Public Servants" and the Mayor would be directly sued.
Knuckle dragging morons the lot of them!
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Tuesday 18th June 2024 18:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Burn it to the ground
I assume the lease was entered into with the town knowing it was for a cell tower. If that is the case, T-Mobile should sue for all prior lease payments, breach of contract on the lease, damages related to loss of revenue, attorney fees, and an injunction to halt all mobile providers providing service to the community since the towers present a danger to the population.
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Tuesday 18th June 2024 19:09 GMT n2ubp
Maybe if they don't put those scary signs on the tall fences...
Maybe they are afraid of those scary signs on the 8 foot high fences topped with barbed wire surrounding the site stating "Danger Radio Frequency Radiation Hazard signs".
Just replace the signs with happy faces and all will be well.
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Tuesday 18th June 2024 20:36 GMT Number6
Safest place for the tower is on top of the school. Your average cell tower antenna is designed to radiate very little energy downwards, so the children would be in the zone of least field strength, unlike putting the tower down the road a bit. Also, good signal strength received by the tower (easily achieved by optimal receive antenna placement - doesn't have to be the same as the TX antenna) causes mobile phones to adjust their transmit power downwards, further reducing exposure by children using phones.
But as said elsewhere, you can't fight wilful ignorance with facts.
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Tuesday 18th June 2024 20:48 GMT DS999
Simple fix
The city should approve the cell tower and put the rent towards turning the school into a Faraday cage, and turn off the wifi. Tell parents their precious children will be protected from harmful RF radiation, but in order to contact them the parents will have to call the school's landline office number since the kids cell phones will be inoperable. Which might be for the best anyway!
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Thursday 20th June 2024 19:13 GMT Mister Dubious
Building site
The Wanaque Planning Board was entirely right to refuse an "application to build a cell tower on invalid grounds." The least, nay, the VERY least T-Mobile ought to do is choose valid grounds for their erections. Put a tower on invalid grounds, and who knows what might happen? It could sink into the grounds all the way up to its knees, it could topple the first time the underground troll rolled over in fitful sleep--heck, it could get SICK and DIE from hanging around with an invalid!
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Friday 21st June 2024 12:20 GMT Stevie
Bah!
So T mobile recover the monies paid, with interest and penalties, and the now-healthy citizens of Wanaque can get back to waving their phones in the air looking for bars as their roads degrade and their services fail and their schools close due to lack of funds until the council raises taxes to cover the shortfall.
Win-win.