Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Matt Fisken, a freelance energy adviser, permaculturist and stay-at-home dad who lives in Hartford.
[I]n 2010, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service (USDA-RUS) awarded Vermont Telephone Co. (VTel) $116 million in grants and federally backed loans as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. [1] VTel agreed to contribute $30 million of its own money and the Vermont Telecommunications Authority (VTA) also chipped in about $10 million (VTA has since taken back a couple million due to project delays on VTel’s part). In all, VTel is spending more than $150 million to 1) upgrade its existing DSL customers to fiber optic lines, and 2) blanket the entire state of Vermont with “4GLTE” wireless service.
VTel has shown that it has no interest in honoring the wishes of towns and that they would rather build new towers from scratch instead of co-locating their antennas on existing towers away from residential areas.
A forward-looking estimate by Jim Porter at Vermont’s Department of Public Service suggests that 600 Vermonters will be using VTel’s Wireless Open World (WOW) service by the end of 2015. [2] That’s $250,000 per household after five years of effort. It is more than fair to call this project “utility grade USDA pork” (ie: very poor results from pork barrel spending).
Besides the the fact that VTel had zero experience providing wireless service prior to the 2010 award, it has been planting many of its towers in places where people already have good broadband options while it adds to the electromagnetic radiation (electrosmog) already present from other major wireless carriers.
VTel has shown that it has no interest in honoring the wishes of towns and that they would rather build new towers from scratch instead of co-locating their antennas on existing towers away from residential areas. [3] After multiple extensions, VTel now has until July 1 of this year to use that stimulus money before it evaporates. Why would they try to be economical, protracted or considerate when all that free money will eventually go away?
A decisive referendum by Norwich voters gave VTel the boot following a tempting deal to build the town’s much needed emergency communications tower in exchange for letting VTel put its antennas and any other carriers’ antennas it who paid for space. [4] This rental income would have been split 95/5 between VTel and Norwich and there would have been no guarantee that additional radiating antennas would not have interfered with critical police, fire and public works radios.
Typically, a wireless telecommunications facility (cellular or wireless internet tower) must be authorized by either a town’s development review board or by the Vermont Public Service Board. There is no record of VTel receiving a certificate of public good by the PSB to build a tower in Norwich and I don’t think this tower was floated by Norwich’s DRB. What may have happened is that it exempt from review by virtue of being a “pole attachment.” It’s possible that it only required permission from Green Mountain Power to build in one of GMP’s existing rights-of-way, similar to the 30+ sites comprising a distributed antenna system recently installed along Routes 132 and 113 in Thetford. The only problem is that the pole on which VTel put its antennas wasn’t there before. It’s only used by VTel.
Now, aside from the issues of cost and permitting, the most serious problem with this new tower is that it effectively radiates a residential neighborhood (McKenna Road), a children’s museum (The Montshire Museum) and a daycare center (The Child Care Center of Norwich) and will likely serve very few people, if any at all.
Herein lies the problem with nearly all consumer wireless communications including WiFi, cordless phones, and so-called “smart” water and electric meters; they emit harmful pulsed microwave radiation even when not being used. This radiation has been known for decades to cause numerous biological health effects (even at low
levels) and as this electro-soup starts to boil over, the human population, migratory birds, honey bees and trees will continue to experience the negative consequences in more dramatic ways. Scientists who actually study this field have issued stark warnings. [5] Will we listen before it is too late?
Since you’ve read this far, please take five more minutes to watch a video I made with my son documenting the before and after radiation levels around VTel’s new tower. I also encourage you to write or call your congressmen and tell them Vermont deserves safe, fast and reliable wired (fiber optic, DSL or cable) broadband connections. We already have too many towers and this “stimulus” project is getting out of control.
