UPDATE: February 19, 2022
The 5G Urgency Ordinance is being amended by the City as a result of the litigation filed by AT&T and Verizon. Write the Planning Commission and the City Council to express your concerns about placement of 5G towers close to homes and schools.
Update: October 4, 2020
This article is authored by the community activist group Los Altan
Los Altan - Supports the Safe Deployment of 5G
Summary
The Los Altos City Council unanimously passed the Small Cell Node Urgency Ordinance on August 5th, 2019. In September 2019, the City denied the applications from both AT&T & Verizon. Both AT&T & Verizon appealed the Council's decision. Ultimately, the City Council denied AT&T’s twelve applications and Verizon’s single application in December 2019. In January 2020, AT&T & Verizon, separately, filed a lawsuit against the City of Los Altos. The lawsuit is currently pending in Federal court.
How did we get here?
The Los Altos Wireless Ordinance had not been updated since 2011. Despite the fact that the City of Los Altos had retained a well known legal firm, BB&K, who represents many cities across California and who also has a wireless practice, they never updated the Los Altos wireless ordinance despite a FCC order that would came down January 2019 limiting a city's ability to regulate 5G cell towers. Many cities in anticipation of the FCC order passed and updated their wireless ordinances including Mill Valley and Fairfax (also represented by BB&K). The wireless carriers interpreted the FCC order as a free pass to place towers virtually wherever they wanted. After all, Ajit Pai (Chairman of the FCC) was a former Verizon attorney. When AT&T submitted their initial application in March 2019, they did so under an outdated wireless ordinance that was drafted in 2011 and didn't account for small cell nodes. That's when residents began receiving notices that cell towers were going to be placed on existing utility poles, right next to their homes and close to our families.
What's the big deal with 5G?
While 5G is a seemingly linear evolution in technology from 4G, after all, 4 is only one number away from 5, the underlying technology architecture is an exponential leap. This is similar to when we made the leap from feature phones to smartphones. While this new technology may bring the promise of faster download speeds and lower latency, there's also a cost component as well. First, this technology has never been tested for safety as discussed by Senator Blumenthal when he asked several wireless executives in a congressional hearing in early 2019. Second, given that 5G runs at very high frequencies, between 50-300 Ghz, the radios are placed in close proximity to homes. Unlike your cell phone that you can either place away from your body or shut off at night, these cell towers will be on 24/7. Beyond the unproven safety of this technology, there are also other issues to consider:
5G cell towers create excessive noise 24/7 due to the cooling fans needed to cool the Lithium ion batteries located on the utility pole
Lithium ion batteries are combustible (we've seen fires erupt on airplanes) on wooden poles and PG&E has demonstrated that utility poles have caused multiple wildfires
Industry research has shown that cell towers negatively impact property values up to 20% because few buyers see it as a plus to live next to a humming cell tower
Aesthetically, cell towers are ugly because they carry about a large refrigerator's worth of equipment that hangs off the side of the utility pole, not to mention the antenna that increases the height of the pole, which also increase instability
Where do we go from here?
The case is currently pending in Federal court. At this time, all litigation is handled by the City Council in closed session. Beyond that, we have a very important election coming up on November 3rd. At the Federal level, it's clear that when our Federal government appoints former Verizon attorneys to run the FCC, there's a clear conflict of interest. We need to elect officials who will serve the best interest of our community, who can balance both the needs of consumers and carriers. At a local level, we need to elect City Council Members who will uphold our wireless ordinance and continue to protect residents. There is a way to deploy 5G technology in Los Altos that's consistent with both our wireless ordinance and the FCC order. However, we cannot let wireless carriers come into our community and bully us, After all, they don't live here, we do!
_____________________________________________________________________________
August 2019
5G cellular wireless transmitters “small nodes” are coming to Los Altos. we will continue to post any new information so stay tuned here!
At the Aug 5, 2019 Los Altos Special City Council meeting, Mayor Lee Eng and the three City Council Members present (Anita Enander, Jan Pepper and Neysa Fligor) came prepared to enact a 5G wireless transmitter urgency ordinance. They had thoroughly reviewed the draft ordinance modeled after Mill Valley’s ordinance and had a number of amendments to offer and discussion of the intent of the language employed by BKK, the city’s outside counsel. In a marathon session, they went through each and every section of the ordinance and the two accompanying resolutions and passed amended versions unanimously. The ordinance has been deemed somewhat more restrictive than the Mill Valley ordinance and was drafted specifically for Los Altos. It went into effect immediately. Links to the ordinance and the two accompanying resolutions as passed by the City Council are here:
Find arguments here from the PRO and CON perspectives, with additional useful information to help understand this complex issue.
CALL TO ACTION
While the research on health effects do not conclusively show cell tower radiation causes health effects, it also doesn’t prove without doubt that these technologies have a clean bill of health. It’s important for us residents to become educated and voice our informed opinions. So, each of us will need to make a decision: What is our sense of risk after we’ve done our own research - do the risks outweigh the benefits? We recommend reading current information on this topic from diverse and trusted sources, and then taking action:
Send an email to city council (council@losaltosca.gov) and let them know where you stand; and/or
Attend regular City Council meetings which are held every 2nd and 4th Tuesday evenings at 7pm in order to have your voice heard on this important topic.
Come back here and watch for other LAR communications on breaking news.
HAVE A HOT TOPIC THAT affects the residents of los altos? Let us know by telling us more in the form below.
Thank you for submitting your hot topic.
Once we review your submission and determine, in our view, that it is a bonafide pro-resident issue, we will work with you and post your issue as a Hot Topic in this section of our website. We will also offer to create email campaigns to further publicize your topic. Some hot topics have residents on both sides of the issue. If we reach out to our network and determine that this is the case with your topic, we will seek to find a contrary resident opinion and post it as well in order to provide a balanced report and better educate residents on the issue.