Atawhai

We need to be prepared not to use or own
cellphones as well as campaigning to ban the tower. It is worth considering that if you can do without your cell to mail it into Telecom immediately. This would send a clear message we no longer need a tower in anyones back yard.

Telecom's move to erect the cell phone tower is a prime example of corporate profit being the sole criterion for decision making, even in the face of the very real potential of damage to the health and well being of our youth! It is time to stand up and say, NO MORE! We can do without cell phones but we can't do without our children being given the opportunity to grow and be healthy.

I wonder if the Telecom 'bosses' would erect a 22m tower over their own child's educational facility???

We have enough elements in our enviroment now to distroy the health of our country without starting on our young ones.

3G,with its high bandwidth fancy video / web streaming demands many close together sites.
This sort of corporate-fascist attitude to health - profit now ,worry later, will destroy us,slowly over time.

The stupid thing is it can be safer - but just like car companys not being pushed in the US to produce high MPG vehicles- look at the euro peugot diesels!

Less breaks in my DNA for me please.

why is it that the big corporates even consider this and other no brainier schemes. We have to then go through the whole process of having to fight against them .
Start with caring for the human beings and work from that not from how much profit can we make the work down and try to get away with has much has possible

I was flabbergasted to return from holiday and find a tower erected close to Mapua School. It saddens me that ignorance puts our children at risk. There is clear medical evidence of a link between electromagnetic pollution and illness despite what the corporates might say. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean to say its not there. We need to be more educated on our relationship to the envirment and to live wisely

we must throw away our computers, tvs, microwaves, ovens, cellphones, cars. All these things cause cancer!! Beer and wine also cause cancer. Too much sun also causes cancer. Eating unhealthy also causes cancer. We must keep complaining about everything and slow down economic growth (which also causes cancer)

we just don't understand why it's acceptable to unleash something on to society and especially children without first ensuring the safety of it. life saving drugs have to go through tests so why not a multi-million $ commodity? Until they can prove it's 100% safe i don't see why i have to accept it invading my home-space without say.
we are not taking care of the future by living for today (isn't that something like vodafone's favourite advertising saying...that says it all the industry has admitted they are only interested in everyone thinking about today)

Great work here :)
Does anyone know where all the proposed mast sites in New Zealand are? Is this information available on the net anywhere? I would like to start an opposition group in my area (south Wairarapa) if masts are planned here. Any info much appreciated! warrenpreiss (at) gmail (dot) com

Cell phone towers offer new cash for schools
By NORMAN DRAPER, Star Tribune

September 16, 2008

Here's one way for a cash-strapped district to make a little extra pocket change: Allow a cell phone company to erect cell phone towers at your schools.

The Anoka-Hennepin school board has approved three such towers, which would be operated by the T-Mobile communications company. The 100-foot-tall towers could be put up as early as a year from now if T-Mobile gets approval from the three communities in which the towers would be located.

If the plan passes muster, payoff for the district will be at least $1,500 a month per site. It could be more if T-Mobile subleases its tower space to another company, said Chuck Holden, Anoka-Hennepin director of administrative services.

The towers would be located at Champlin Park High School, in Brooklyn Park; Northdale Middle School, in Coon Rapids; and University Avenue Elementary School, in Blaine. According to Holden, the district has had two cell phone towers for nine years at two other sites: Blaine High School and Park View Early Childhood Center, in Champlin. At Blaine High School, the tower is attached to one of the football field light poles. At Park View, it's attached to a power pole.

Other school districts have been renting out cell phone tower space for up to a decade. Paul Harrington, whose St. Paul-based Carlson & Harrington consulting firm negotiated the T-Mobile agreement with Anoka-Hennepin, said he has negotiated tower agreements with such districts as Osseo, White Bear Lake, Hastings and Stillwater.

"We have a number of agreements in place with schools," he said. "They view it as a revenue opportunity." Schools, with their spacious grounds, are often good sites for such towers because there are often zoning restrictions requiring them to be specified distances from homes, Harrington said.

The new Champlin Park tower would also be attached to a football field light pole. In the case of the other two schools, the towers would be freestanding structures behind the schools.

Cell phone towers, needed to accommodate the growing hordes of cell phone users, are sometimes the subject of contention between landowners who want the paycheck for renting out their space and neighbors who see them as a blight on the landscape.

"Those can be big, ugly towers," said Jerry Newton, the only school board member to vote against allowing the tower construction on school grounds. "I know if that was coming into my neighborhood I would really oppose it."

In fact, the tower now at Blaine High School was originally proposed for Newton's Coon Rapids neighborhood, and he and his neighbors opposed the tower on aesthetic grounds.

Newton said he was also concerned that, by going to the school board first, T-Mobile negotiators paved the way for getting a rubber-stamp approval from the City Councils that must also OK the deal. Without that prior approval, he said, there would probably be more active debates at the City Council level.

District officials say there has been no opposition to the towers from parents.

School board chairman Michael Sullivan voted in favor of the plan despite some ambivalence.

"If there's not a health issue or an issue in the community surrounding it, then it's kind of like, 'Why not?'" he said. Sullivan said he has wondered about the health impact of tower transmissions but has been satisfied by arguments that threats to health are nonexistent.

The towers at University Avenue Elementary and Northdale Middle would be covered in plastic shrouds to hide the clusters of antennae, Harrington said.

"It gives a much cleaner look to it," he said.

Norman Draper • 612-673-4547