Pole Position

In March, a letter from T-Mobile shattered their idyll.

The letter looked so much like junk mail many of their neighbors tossed it in their recycling bins unopened. But Yuen opened it to learn of T-Mobile's plans to replace the 43-foot wooden utility pole in front of his home on Southeast 71st Avenue with a 61-foot cellphone tower. 

Yuen, a fundraiser for nonprofits who has two small children, flipped out. His thoughts turned to potential harm from the tower's radio frequency waves—even though the health risk from ground-level exposure is unproven and such exposure is typically thousands of times below federal safety limits. 

His second thoughts concerned aesthetics. "It's going to look very industrial," he says.

The expansion of wireless technology devices is nothing new. Neither is neighborhood uproar. Already, 70 towers loom over the city's public rights of way, about half on residential streets. 

No towers have gone up since Mayor Charlie Hales took office, but in the past year, carriers have proposed seven additional towers in Portland's rights of way, including the one in Mount Tabor.

What's different now is that neighbors thought they had a champion in Hales, who as a candidate in 2012 pledged to fight the proliferation of unsightly cellphone towers on residential streets.

"I'll continue to advance our rich tradition of neighborhood involvement and fight to ensure that cell towers are not forced upon those neighborhoods that don't want them," Hales the candidate told the Alameda Neighborhood Association in May 2012.

Mount Tabor residents say he hasn't lived up to his campaign promise, and that Hales' office has instead responded to their concerns about the proposed cell tower with stock emails from low-level aides. 

"I'm appalled," says Shelly Lufkin, who lives two doors down from Yuen. "[Hales] won't be getting my vote."

The mayor declined to be interviewed for this story. Hales spokesman Dana Haynes sent WW an email describing the city's continued displeasure with 1996 federal limits on local governments' authority to regulate the location of wireless towers.

In 2009, the Portland City Council unanimously passed a resolution urging the feds to "update studies on potential health effects of radio frequency wireless emissions in light of significant increases in wireless use."

Also in 2009, the city started requiring companies to hold informational meetings with neighbors if they wanted to install new facilities on residential streets. Nothing in the rules, however, requires companies to heed residents' objections.

Two weeks ago, Yuen started a petition to persuade T-Mobile to back off its plans for Mount Tabor.

Rod De La Rosa, a spokesman for T-Mobile, says the company is aware of neighbors' concerns but that T-Mobile believes the site is necessary. "We're going to continue to move forward to provide the needed coverage," he says.

It's unclear to Yuen and his neighbors what, if anything, Hales has done—or could do—to back up his campaign rhetoric about cell towers. "This is an issue they're not interested in engaging in," Yuen says. "He's washing his hands of it.”  

WWeek 2015