I know a number of Davis homeowners who can’t accept the blatant “anything for business” attitude of the telecommunication companies that are trying to force ugly and unsafe towers into Davis’ usually serene and beautiful environs.

The homeowners, many with children’s safety to be concerned about, are distressed enough to set up a booth at the Davis Farmers Market on Saturday. They’ve adopted the name Neighbors Opposed to Distributed Antenna Systems, or NO DAS. The chairperson is Jill Theg.

They hope to impress on anyone who is concerned how important it is for everyone to speak out at the next Planning Commission meeting Sept. 14, and to first send letters to the commission members and the Davis City Council members.

Davis has had a tradition of putting utilities underground, and Crown Castle International Corp., the culprit on scene now, already has been putting fiber optic cables underground, I understand, to the sites to which they want to mount huge, ugly above-ground telecommunication devices. Not only are they a blight to the neighborhoods in which they are already installed, but they are a real and present hazard to us and our children.

There is an article titled “Biological effects from exposure to electromagnetic radiation emitted by cell tower base stations and other antenna arrays,” by Blake Levitt and Henry Lai. It was published by NRC Research Press Web site on Nov. 5, 2010.

That article stresses that “it is clear the low-intensity Radio Frequency Radiation (RFR) is not biologically inert,” and that the studies so far have been of “short-term (minutes to hours) exposure,” but the telecommunication devices that Crown Castle wants to install would operate 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

The current Davis zoning ordinance requires a 500-foot buffer in residential zones for installations like telecommunication towers. Crown Castle wants to scuttle our ordinances. Let your Planning Commission and City Council know what you think of scuttling necessary ordinances that have been drafted to protect our citizens. Other cities like Santa Barbara and Santa Rosa have been able to maintain their protective ordinances. Why can’t we?

Francis Resta

Davis

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