Delay, Delay, Delay: Another School Community Makes Headway in the Fight Against Cell Towers

Milestone Communications

Communications representative Christian Winkler shows a
PowerPoint presentation detailing his company's research during
a community meeting Monday at West County Area library to
discuss plans for a Verizon cellphone tower to be placed at
Piney Orchard Elementary School. On Tuesday, Winkler said
 plans are on hold and Milestone will work with the Piney Orchard
Community Association to find a better location for the tower.

Cell tower planned 

at Odenton school 

on hold

Milestone Communications plans to address Piney Orchard Elementary health concerns

Posted: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 12:00 am | Updated: 11:50 am, Wed May 22, 2013.
By JAKE LINGER jlinger@capgaznews.com

A proposed 99-foot cellphone tower at Piney Orchard Elementary School is on hold — less than a day after a contentious community meeting at West County Area library.

Christian Winkler, vice president of development at Milestone Communications, said Tuesday the company won’t move forward with its building permit application until it can address health and safety concerns raised by members of the Piney Orchard Community Association.

“Justified or not, people feel what they feel. We’re not out to cause more distress for anyone,” Winkler said.
The tower is one of the first proposed at Anne Arundel County Public Schools under a lease with Milestone Communications. The Virginia-based company will pay $25,000 a year to the school system for the tower, plus additional fees as more carriers lease space on the tower and then 40 percent of rent charged to those companies.

Another tower has been proposed at Broadneck High School, and three more are in development at Chesapeake High, South River High and Tracey’s Elementary schools.

About 50 angry Piney Orchard residents, most of them parents of students at the school, questioned Winkler on Monday about the dangers posed by radiation from the tower, which already is under contract to Verizon.

Winkler presented information on health standards for cellphone towers set by the Federal Communications Commission in 1996 that cap radiation at 50 times less than considered harmful levels of exposure.
“Everything we do is done within those limits,” Winkler said.

But Sean Hughes, land use counsel for Milestone, said “the safety issue is not a real issue.”
Jamie Fraser, the parent of a Piney Orchard student, said Milestone might have been misleading because it skewed its safety data to make cell towers appear safer for surrounding communities, not students who might get close up.

The proposed cell tower would be surrounded by a 10-foot fence and would be disguised to better blend into the tree line with artificial shrubbery, bark and branches. The tower is approximately 400 feet from the school building.

“The risk zone is if you were to be within 3 feet of an antenna and stay there minute to minute to minute. That’s where it gets risky,” Hughes said. “After you move 3 feet away, (the radiation) is so little and that’s why the levels are so low.”

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