Sunroom Desk

More than 200 ’stealth’ cell tower sites have recently been installed on historic lampposts and utility poles in Boston, Massachusetts neighborhoods, with no notification to residents. Even a city councilor was taken by surprise by a site installed near his home. Last week, the Boston Herald reported:

In recent months, 202 so-called “stealth” cell towers – camouflaged as street light poles and “historic” lamp posts or mounted atop utility poles – were installed on city streets from Back Bay to Jamaica Plain, alarming residents who suddenly found them outside their front doors.
…“I think we’re reaching a saturation point here,” said City Councilor Charles Yancey, who last month discovered an “innocuous-looking” light pole erected near his Dorchester home was indeed a “mini cell phone tower.”
Saying the city has done a “woefully inadequate job” of informing residents of the cellular antennas in their midst, Yancey wants a moratorium on new cell sites until the city develops a better community notification plan and studies what he calls a “high concentration” of cell towers.

The Herald reported that the city does not know the total number of cell antennas that have been placed throughout the community. It also stated that while residents of other communities have “sometimes successfully fought efforts to install towers” Boston residents have found the sites up and running before they can run down to city chambers and protest.

Glendale, California’s 2009 moratorium to study the issue before allowing cell carriers to move into residential neighborhoods is looking like a very wise decision. On the other side of the country, Boston mayor Thomas Menino is now asking for a city moratorium to create guidelines for future installations. With 202 cell sites already approved by its public works department and now up and running, Boston may not be able to do much for residents already affected by the installations.

The Herald article says that NextG Networks of San Jose, California received permission from the Boston Public Improvement Commission to install over 100 new street light antenna poles and to place 74 antennas on existing utility poles. The company paid the city an annual $15,000 fee. Another firm, Light Tower, has a similar contract with the city. Both firms are leasing the cites to area cell carriers.