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Woburn residents allege lack of consultation on cell towers - Hutt Valley news

Woburn residents allege lack of consultation on cell towers

Some residents in the Knights Road area are concerned that they haven’t been consulted over a proposal to erect a telecommunications microwave tower and related equipment on top of the Waterloo Interchange building.

One resident believes the Hutt City Council has only sent information to a select few properties right opposite, including Omega Wigs at 214 Knights Road, Take Five and the dairy adjacent.

"This seems totally wrong and several homeowners/residents in the area who have learned of the application are concerned at the implications for them, their families and their property values if that application is approved and the towers and other equipment pods proceed."

Another concern is for the many pregnant women and children who regularly use the railway/bus station. They want to be assured this equipment is safe.

The application to install the equipment has been lodged by Auckland-based New Zealand Communications Ltd, which according to media reports aims to be New Zealand’s third mobile phone operator.

Council planning officer James Beban says the proposed tower has been assessed as a "restricted discretionary" activity, and as such "there are only certain factors we can take into account". These include the design and external appearance of the equipment, site layout, noise and the like. As the tower is to be set back from the edges of the interchange building "and is quite low", it will only really be able to be seen by a limited number of properties (mainly the commercial premises notified), Mr Beban says.

Another factor that can be taken into account is health and safety. But as the proposed tower and equipment meets the New Zealand standard in terms of electromagnetic frequency, that’s not likely to result in the council refusing consent. Mr Beban says "99.9%" of cellphone towers in New Zealand meet the standard.

He believes such towers are "not so contentious" in the Hutt as some other places because they don’t tend to be located in residential areas here and rather than being separate structures, our District Plan encourages telecommunication companies to put them on top of existing commercial buildings to limit the visual intrusion.

There have been studies that have indicated possible links between low-level electromagnetic radiation and cancers, with other symptoms including rashes, fatigue and headaches. But according to a recent Dominion Post report, radio frequencies emitted by cellphone towers are non-ionising, which means that, unlike x-ray machines, they are not considered energetic enough to change dna and bring about cancer.

The Dominion Post quotes Sydney University professor Bruce Armstrong as saying studies to date have proven no links to adverse health. "There really isn’t any clear mechanism whereby mobile phone energy can cause cancer. They have been around now for 10-15 years....It would be likely that if something was going on and it was big, we would be seeing it."

The deadline for objections to NZCL’s tower on Waterloo interchange proposal is 16 September.

Despite three calls to the company last week, and an undertaking by the national sales manager to get someone to ring us back, we did not get a chance to ask NZCL about its plans locally. Earlier media reports have said the company employs more than 120 staff in New Zealand, and is building cellphone towers in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch as it builds up to a nationwide launch of services. It has a roaming agreement in place with Vodafone.

Hutt City Council recently advertised bids by NZCL to put cellphone towers on council-owned sites, in Parkway (Wainuiomata), Honeysuckle Grove (Maungaraki) and Shaftsbury Grove (Stokes Valley). James Beban explains these were widely advertised because they were applications to lease areas of council land managed as recreation reserve (not consent applications). Objections to leasing these sites closed 29 August.