Thursday 12/8: “Some Questions That Need Answering By Verizon” Letter from former Sugarbush Resort owner and MRV resident Wim Smith.

Sunday, 12/4 update from the Valley Reporter re: Wed 12/7 and Mon, 12/12 meetings. 

Publisher’s Note: Terrain Theory Alert! Thanks to Vermont neighbor and permaculturalist Ben Falk of Whole Systems Design for this thoughtful meditation below on the consequences of deploying  EMF-emitting towers in Vermont, and Jim Wood’s “200 Foot Cell Tower Story,” a Cautionary Tale courtesy of VT Digger.

Latest peer-reviewed science on EMF’s environmental consequences here, with 130 references.

And join “Vermont Independent” publisher Rob Williams for a conversation with Donnie Simpson about microwave technology and our public health commons. We’re reposting this as Verizon is planning yet another giant cell tower for our Mad River Valley – see map below.

Read more about the environmental history of EMF technology at Our Geoengineering Age, and get involved via Vermont Stands Up and Vermonters for a Clean Environment.

The targeting of a knoll in Warren, VT for a new wireless transmitter reminds me when federal agents destroyed the Faillace’s East Warren sheep flock for a disease which never existed before or since.[1]  More than 20 years later, we see a similar process where policy takes its direction from industry rather than the citizenry and their commons. If built, the new wireless transmitter will likely increase the background rate of radiofrequency radiation in the Airport and Dump road neighborhoods, as well as across the valley in the Butternut Hill area by hundreds to thousands of percent. These transmitters often increase electronic pollution over wide areas, usually from half a square mile to two square miles, from 0.000-0.005mW/m2 (the current background rate in most of Vermont) to 0.500-5.000 mW/m2.

Big Telecom finds itself where Big Tobacco was in the 1960’s or 1970’s – an industry gold rush persisting despite massive evidence of harm that has mounted for decades.  Thousands of scientific studies clearly show biological damage from exposure to the high frequency radiation produced by cell phones and particularly cell towers.[2]  Despite this (perhaps because of), the primary “regulator” – the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), has refused to update safety measures governing cellular technology since 1996. This bears repeating: no reevaluation of public safety benchmarks has been done since the time when 15% of Americans had a cell phone and there were less than 1,000 cellular towers. Today, more than 97% own a cellphone, there are more 471,000 cell towers, with more than 1 trillion dollars spent their development.  Whether it’s Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Ag/Chem, or the telecom frenzy, the pattern is the same: industry wrings out decades of profit, funds the regulators, funds “the science,” stalls policy updates to keep their gravy train ahead of the law, ensures legal immunity for themselves, and then hands off the multi-generational social and environmental cost to civic society.

According to Propublica, 11-10-22:

“Then and now, the FCC’s rules targeted just one health hazard: the possibility that wireless radiation can cause immediate “thermal” damage, by overheating skin the way a microwave oven heats food. Meanwhile, the FCC doesn’t even consider “biological” impacts: the possibility that wireless exposure, even at levels well below the FCC limits, can cause an array of human health problems, as well as harm to animals and the environment. By contrast, more than 20 foreign governments have adopted protective measures or recommended precautions. France requires new phones to be sold with headsets and written guidance on limiting radiation exposures. In 1994 Motorola swung into action when it learned of troubling research that two hours of exposure to modest levels of wireless radiation damaged DNA in the brains of lab rats. Such changes can lead to cancerous tumors. Motorola’s then-PR chief described a strategy to discredit the findings in a pair of memos that were later leaked to Microwave News. Motorola’s approach would serve as a template for the industry’s response to troublesome research over the three decades that followed. The researchers’ methodology would be challenged for raising “too many uncertainties” to justify any conclusions. The scientists’ credibility would be questioned and their findings dismissed as irrelevant. Finally, friendly academics, “willing and able to reassure the public on these matters,” would be recruited to rebut the findings. Henry Lai, an emeritus professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington, has compiled a database of 1,123 peer-reviewed studies published since 1990 investigating biological effects from wireless-radiation exposure. Some 77% have found “significant” effects.

“Vermont has been lapped so many times we’re now ahead.” 

Telecom giants have blanketed most regions surrounding Vermont with an almost unbroken grid of service/radiation in recent years.  Drive into Mass or through CT or southern NH or NY and one tower fades in the rear-view mirror while the next one appears ahead, thousands upon thousands of towers have sprung up rapdily. Yet much of rural Vermont has remained a relatively in-tact viewshed of knolls and ridgelines, quiet backroads and even highways that offer no cell reception to entice a would-be distracted driver to check Facebook or read a text.  What are these viewsheds worth?  Has the State done a cost-benefit analysis by which to guide the trading away of some of our scenery for the supposed benefits of “more service.”  The current State-level approach assumes and exaggerates benefits while taking such an unserious look at costs as to not even consider them.

Cellular coverage does not mean, on its own, that Vermont will be more attractive to businesses. The only substance in this refrain is that it’s been repeated so many times that some of us believe it.  Businesses today need fast, reliable and affordable internet – at their location (unless you want to Zoom while driving). The answer to this is simple and already underway: fiberoptic cable run to town centers and later to individual homes using existing powerline infrastructure rather than new (usually steep, erosion-prone) roads which necessarily depends on blasting, bulldozing, surfacing and maintaining new roads to the wilder, more mountainous and most sensitive parts of our watershed. Fiber is already far along in reaching most Vermonters and it outperforms cellular for high bandwidth internet multiple times over in terms of cost, reliability (and data security) all while being deliverable at much a lower cost to customers and the landscape at large. EC Fiber and Waitsfield Telecom are doing a great job of it and could do more if they received half as much support as the tower-building giants have gotten.  Yes, town and village centers probably benefit economically from some cellular coverage and that has been achieved in the past few years – it can also be had by much smaller towers sited much lower in the landscape.

Areas targeted for tower development are inherently the highest and least accessible points in the landscape which tend to make them the wildest, most intact and sensitive habitats in our watershed. These are areas normally prioritized for protection for their acute role in wildlife value, flood prevention, forest health, soil protection and carbon sequestration, aesthetic and viewshed preservation, recreation, and more. Where are land trusts and state conversation organizations as this feeding frenzy has gained steam? The State’s current agenda for cellular coverage does not count these and other negative impacts including the carbon cost of new road construction, the astoundingly large concrete inputs, road base, gravel and road maintenance, ditching and stormwater conveyance on steep upper watershed areas, etc. It’s no mystery that these are the worst places in which to build roads and erect industrial infrastructure, store backup diesel tanks, and otherwise defile. Once such access has been secured other negative impacts are more likely down the road such as housing development, heavy logging, land clearing, mining, new tech deployment etc.

Vermont’s crinkled terrain and need for main roads to follow the valley floors necessitate far more towers (they require direct line-of-sight) than flatter landscapes with broader valleys. Nowhere in the State’s push toward more coverage is there a serious accounting of this characteristic and its implications on how much coverage is realistic to aim for or in the projection of number of towers required.  If the State produced, along with each of their proclaimed cell coverage goals, a map showing all the new towers required and photos of each ridgeline with new towers superimposed on them, the public would at least have a chance to begin to comment intelligently on the implications at hand.

The push to widely develop Vermont’s landscape with cellular transmitters should be opposed on at least the following grounds:

1. lack of democratic public processes seeking informed citizen input;
2. lack of environmental assessment as to impacts on public health, wildlife, ecosystems and climate change;
3. lack of accountability by telecom companies in reception coverage studies, site planning and project deliverables and;
4. lack of dubious benefits to the public bearing cellular developments and high economic cost to the public as tax dollars enable such projects.

It is incumbent upon the Public to oppose such projects. This will buy time in which policy-makers can catch up with the pace of industry and we can collectively and democratically choose our direction.  With civil engagement there can be a pause necessary to consider the landscape we’ve inherited, which is in no small part the result of such involvement in the past: A Vermont that in contrast to every single other state, chose to not defile her landscape with the commerce of billboards, A Vermont that chose to keep her forested mountaintops intact rather than blast parkways across the tops of her watersheds, a Vermont that chose land use policies that limit the conversion of fields and forests into subdivisions, parking lots and shopping plazas. These came from effort and engagement, sacrifice and vision, and a refusal to let short-term commerce determine the future of our valleys and hills.  Will we look up from our devices long enough to notice where we are headed and do something about it? We can support a working landscape and the Defreests our neighbors, while we oppose a trajectory at odds with the spirit, history, and highest possibilities of Vermont.

[1] https://www.loe.org/showsal/segments.html?programID=06-P13-00046&segmentID=7

[2] https://bioinitiative.org/research-summaries/