Chandler, AZ

Dec 16, 2020 — Taming the 4G/5G Rollout with a Chandler Arizona City Council Member

This is the State Bill we are discussing: Arizona HB.2365, which was voted in by the Arizona State Legislators in 2017.

Slides: 2020-1216-Chandler-AZ/pdf

   

Oct 12, 2020 Chandler City Council Study Session

 

Stellar Public Comment and City Council Discussion — 29:45 to 1:15:15
Slide Presentation by City of Chandler, AZ

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Oct 12, 2020 — KW Testimony

My name is __________. I attest and affirm that the following statements are true, accurate, and within my personal knowledge.

Thank you for our six minutes today. ___________ and I will split the time and then we can answer your questions. Following that, there are three others who wish to make public comments.

Scott and I both live in Chandler. I own my home and am raising my family here. I run a successful business in this Community. I am speaking today to defend my home and my family from a dangerous and unnecessary invasion — densified 4G/5G Wireless Telecommunications Facilities (or WTFs for short) being constructed next to our homes.

No one — and I mean no one — wants to live closer than 2,500 feet from a cell tower of any G because there is already real evidence of harms from around the US, due to insufficient regulation of maximum Effective Radiated Power from these WTFs :

  • public safety harms [pause]
  • privacy harms [pause]
  • and property value harms.

In some cities in other states, this has been properly managed through zoning laws so no cell towers of any size or any G will be constructed in the public rights of way of residential zones. That is a real solution . . .

. . . but thanks to a ridiculous 2017 Arizona State Bill — that we are working to repeal — HB.2365 — the onus is on you, the City Council to pass local laws that will actually deliver public safety — regardless of any existing federal or state statutes, regulations or guidelines.

So, we have a real problem in Chandler. [pause] Our laws are in conflict [pause] and the buck stops with you, our City Council members who must deliver public safety.

Despite the mountains of Wireless industry propaganda, your hands are not tied. You can pass a local ordinance that regulates the maximum electromagnetic power allowed through the air — enough to enable telecommunications service — and no higher.

Such a local ordinance will not result in effective prohibition of telecommunications service and therefore is legal and defensible with respect to HB.2365 and the 1996 Telecommunications Act. The Wireless industry and even possibly your City Attorney might tell you otherwise, but they would be wrong.

They would be thinking too far inside the box. You can set policy to properly balance the needs of "real persons" — Chandler’s residents, voters and taxpayers and my family — versus the needs of "artificial persons" — billion dollar Telecom companies.

We need you to protect us. Full stop. Please invite the public to the table to work with the City staff to define a creative and protective local ordinance.

I have expressed no matter of mere concern but solely matters of substance, fact and law.

Thank you. Scott will now cover some more specifics . . .

Oct 12, 2020 — SB Testimony

My name is _____________. I attest and affirm that the following statements are true, accurate, and within my personal knowledge.

I also live in Chandler and am a real estate agent. I see every day in my job that people are choosing to sell at a loss and move away — instead of living next to a cell tower. We are actively seeing an unnecessary and unjustified "taking" of property from Chandler residents to enrich multi-billion dollar Telecom companies. This should not be happening.

Esteemed City Council members, this densified 4G/5G rollout is hurting your constituents’ pocketbooks in two ways, simultaneously.

  1. First, many residents are facing significant decreases in their own home’s values. For each Wireless Telecommunications Facility (WTF) in the public rights of way, the Telecom company is picking winners and losers in our neighborhoods; anyone next to a WTF is an instant loser.

  2. Second, the Telecom company has manipulated the State and local governments into unwittingly participate in a huge liability transfer. In short, there is no insurance for the coming claims for injury, illness or death from microwave radiation and the City as a joint venture partner is not sufficiently insured.

Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) are listed as a pollutant under the insurance policy exclusion of coverage. That means this will not EMF/RF generated illnesses. Exclusion language from General Liability Policies Of Zurich, Sun, Hartford and CFC Underwriting for Lloyd’s of London, state the following:

"We will not pay anything under this policy, claim expenses, in respect of: Electromagnetic fields any liability nature directly or indirectly caused by, in connection with or contributed to by or arising from electromagnetic fields or electromagnetic radiation."

This problem needs to be addressed immediately by the City of Chandler.

  • Microwave radiation has been classified by the Wireless industry and the largest reinsurers in the world as toxic "pollution" and all general liability plans include a "pollution exclusion clause" for RF/EMR.

  • The city has a legitimate right to require insurance . . . which means either third party supplemental insurance without a pollution exclusion clause, listing the City as an additionally insured or . . .

  • Self-insurance from multibillion dollar Big AT&T, Big T-Mobile or Big Verizon directly

The problem is the City of Chandler is not doing business directly with Big AT&T, Big T-Mobile or Big Verizon. Instead the firm signing the application is a shell company designed to go bankrupt as soon as the first claim arrives.

That leave the City of Chandler and the taxpayers holding the bag. This could bankrupt our City . . . unless the City does its due diligence and avoids bait and switch liability coverage terms from AT&T, T-Mobile or Verizon to a lesser shell company which holds insufficient assets.

Make sure the parent Telecom companies remain liable, not the City of Chandler.

I have expressed no matter of mere concern but solely matters of substance, fact and law.

Oct 12, 2020 — AM Testimony

I’m ___________, a resident of Chandler. I attest and affirm that the following statements are true, accurate, and within my personal knowledge.

I am discussing property value decreases caused by cell tower installations near homes.

It’s well-established that properties abutting electric power lines suffer from lower selling prices — 20 to 30% lower. Established research over the last 20 years shows that same thing happens for homes next to cell towers.

Why is that? In homes next to electric power lines, the magnetic fields are known to cause significantly higher occurrences of childhood leukemia and other illnesses. The same holds true for homes next to cell towers. The electromagnetic power through the air spewing from cell towers — 24/7 day and night, year after year — also causes significantly higher occurrences of childhood leukemia as well as a host of other direct, immediate neurological and cardiac harms.

Running cell towers at more than the minimum amount of power needed for telecommunications service violates 47 US Code Section 324. Such violations occur daily in Arizona wherever there is an insufficiently regulated cell tower operating in the public rights-of-way near homes because no federal state or local government is effectively policing the maximum power output from so-called "small" Wireless Telecommunications Facilities (or sWTFs, for short) .

The Chandler City Council could fix this problem by passing a local ordinance to require a simple City-controlled fuse on every sWTF. Such a local ordinance would bring each sWTF into compliance with our Federal statute.

Such a local ordiannce could also earn the City big money — by levying policing fees on Telecom firms that blow any of the City-controlled fuses. We call this a "three strikes and you are out program".

The handout shows a photo of three California homes with cell towers constructed too close to homes.

  • The children in the two-story home shown in the left photo became seriously ill from 50,000 average radiation units in their bedroom. The parents spent over $10,00 on shielding and are now parties to a law suit.

  • The resident in the middle photo pleaded with the City of San Francisco not to turn on the WTF located 12 feet from her room. Three months later, she received a brain tumor diagnosis and had a mass removed from her head.

  • The picture of the home on the right with the words “No! Stop this!” spray painted on the equipment cabinet is a sad story. This electromagnetic sensitive woman sold quickly at 23% less than market value because she could no longer live there.

Research shows that 94% of home buyers and renters are less interested in properties near cell towers and would pay less for a property in close vicinity to cellular antennas. Even if we conservatively only a 10% loss to Chandler’s 2019 property tax revenue of $16,874,253.00, this would represent a potential loss of 1.6 million dollars to the city.

I have expressed no matter of mere concern but solely matters of substance, fact and law.

Oct 12, 2020 — SD Testimony

My name is ___________. I have lived in Chandler for 20 years

I attest and affirm that the following statements are true, accurate, and within my personal knowledge.

I want to warn members of the city council that the buildout of densified 4G/5G towers poses serious health AND financial risk to the city of Chandler, and that the city DOES have power to regulate the location, placement and operations of these Wireless Telecommunications Facilities (WTFs), despite what the wireless industry lobbyists have told state and local officials.

Section 332(c)(7)(B)(iv) of the 1996 Telecommunication act states that

“No State or local government or instrumentality thereof may regulate the placement, construction, and modification of personal wireless service facilities on the basis of the environmental effects of radio frequency emissions to the extent that such facilities comply with the Commission’s regulations concerning such emissions.”

The plain language of this preemption law states that local governments cannot regulate on the basis of environmental effects but nowhere does it say cannot regulate on the the basis of “health effects”

People in Chandler are facing safety, privacy and property value hazards simply because the City — to date — has failed to sufficiently regulate Vertical [pause] Horizontal [pause] and Power for so-called "small" Wireless Telecommunications Facility antennas.

  • Vertical is the number of feet off the ground),
  • Horizontal is the number of feet away from homes and
  • Power is the Maximum Effective Radiated Power (Watts ERP) that the antenna can output.

It is easy to calculate the maximum ERP from any antenna spec sheet. You multiply maximum power input by antenna gain for each channel and then sum the total.

When the original Macro Towers were constructed far from residential areas, they had antennas with 200 feet of Vertical and 2,500+ feet of Horizontal. This VHP recipe allows the RF signal to waft into residential areas at a low enough level to enable calls and to not ruin the quiet enjoyment of streets . . . -85 dBm.

But, when cell tower antennas have only 25-30 of Vertical and only 30-50 feet of Horizontal, then we have a real disaster: 50,000 average radiation units or -10 dBm.

The City of Chandler needs to cap the maximum output power of these close-in sWTF antennas to that which enables phone calls, but no higher.

Our Federal Senators and Representatives wrote a conference report explaining the legislative intent for the 1996 Telecommunications Act>

The 1996-TCA Conference Report states:

“[T]he conferees do not intend [pause] that if a State or local government grants a permit in a commercial district, it must also grant a permit for a competitor’s 50-foot tower in a residential district.”

Localities can use their police powers over the public rights-of-way to preserve the quiet enjoyment of streets by requiring a fiber optic sharing box on every WTF. A third piece of equipment can filter out the dirty electricity induced in the local electrical lines.

I have expressed no matter of mere concern but solely matters of substance, fact and law.

Oct 12, 2020 — BB Testimony

Hello, my name is _____________.  I attest and affirm that the following statements are true, accurate and within my personal knowledge.

Prior to my career in health care, I was an engineer with the telecommunications industry for nine years, working for companies developing wireless generations that were precursors to 5G.
Now, as a healthcare provider, I see many people with chronic disease, including those with electromagnetic sensitivity.  So I am in a unique position to understand the technical and public safety problems caused by sending wireless signals through the air.

5G or “fifth generation” wireless deploys xenobiotic, pulsed, modulated microwave radiation in wavelengths ranging from 20 inches down to 0.1 inch, which are all in addition to the existing 3G/4G wavelengths. Microwave radiation in these wavelengths is hazardous because it is maximally absorbed by human, animal and insect bodies. 

"Xenobiotic" means foreign to all life.  5G near-millimeter waves (20,000 to 40,000 MHz) penetrate into and harm eyes, ears and skin, while beam-forming concentrates the radiation — concentrating a spray into a laser-like and powerful beam.

Microwave radiation’s effects on human health is one of the most-studied pheonomena in science. The US and other militaries studied the effects of radar and other microwave weapons in the years leading up to World War II.  Through 2020, over 20,000 studies document the adverse biological effects of microwave radiation on humans, animals, insects and plants — but these biological effects are wholly ignored by the FCC, ANSI, NCRP and other agencies.

Harms occur at intensities far below any FCC or international maximum public exposure guidelines. Such a willful ignorance has been a scam from day one. In short, the emperor has no clothes.

  • Microwave radiation causes neurologic harms such as insomnia, ADD, and memory loss, and opens the blood-brain barrier such that toxins easily enter the brain.

  • Microwave radiation impairs heart rhythm and increases blood pressure.

  • Microwave radiation causes DNA damage, leading to birth defects and cancer, and impairs cellular respiration, reducing the red blood cells’ ability to uptake oxygen. 

The deployment of microwave radiation upon Chandler residents without their knowledge or consent will result in certain harm. Local government cannot lawfully shirk its duty to deliver Public Safety.

The metric that matters most is how much microwave radiation invades second- and third-story bedrooms. Comparing professional measurements of microwave radiation from a properly sited Macro tower — with antennas that are 2500 feet away and 200 feet off the ground — to the microwave radiation from a typical so-called Small Cell — with antennas that are 50 feet away and 25-30 feet off the ground — leads to a stunning conclusion . . .

A so-called Small Cell pumps into bedrooms 25 million times more power than needed for five bars on a cell phone.

25 million times higher. [pause] That is a disaster in anyone’s book and completely unnecessary. We need a protective local ordinance in Chandler.

I’ve expressed no matter of concern, but solely matters of substance: of fact and law. I accept your oath of office.