GILROY
– Anti-transmission tower activist Chris Cote has squelched a
Gilroy Unified School District plan to place two wireless phone
antennas atop what many Luigi Aprea Elementary School parents
thought were just flagpoles going up in front of the district’s
second-newest school.
GILROY – Anti-transmission tower activist Chris Cote has squelched a Gilroy Unified School District plan to place two wireless phone antennas atop what many Luigi Aprea Elementary School parents thought were just flagpoles going up in front of the district’s second-newest school.
Citing parent-communication concerns – and not the health and safety issues that Cote has brought before the city before – GUSD Superintendent Edwin Diaz said Tuesday morning he would not permit the cellular antennas to be installed atop the flagpoles. The district was going to collect $900 a month for renting the flagpole space from Cingular Wireless corporation. Proceeds would have gone directly to the school.
“I just don’t think it’s worth it,” Diaz said. “This issue should have gone to the board. Because it didn’t, we’ve ended up with a communication problem with our parents. Just because of the way it happened, my first inclination is to terminate it.”
This morning a group of angry residents gathered to protest the installation. It’s not yet clear if the 50-foot poles will now only host the American and California flags or if they will come down altogether. It is also unknown if Cingular Wireless will appeal Diaz’s ruling or charge the district for work done. Company representatives could not be reached before deadline.
“What we’re looking at is actually removing these poles. That’s equipment from Cingular and they want it back. At this point they seem to understand (our concerns),” Diaz said.
Diaz said the district did not have concerns over health and safety issues at the school in Gilroy’s northwest quad, equating the radiation output from the antennas as equal to that of having a cell phone on.
“This is something that has been done at many other school districts. It’s the first time we’ve done this in our district,” GUSD Facilities Director Charlie Van Meter said.
“We’re asking the district to err on the safe side,” said Cote, who has a nephew that attends Luigi Aprea. “There is ample evidence in medical literature that demonstrates that close and constant contact with radiation will have a detrimental effect on children. Their cells divide at 16 times the rate of an adult. That means the radiation has a 16 times greater chance of mutating their DNA and causing tumors and cancer.”
Cote said Luigi Aprea Principal Sergio Montenegro and more than two dozen teachers signed a petition distributed two weeks ago which asks the district not to place wireless communication facilities within 2,500 feet of school children.
The district told workers to delay construction of the roughly 50-foot poles late Monday, until officials had a chance to discuss Cote’s concerns at a meeting held this morning. Immediately before that session Diaz told The Dispatch he would not allow the antenna project to move forward.
Diaz said he takes “full responsibility” for the issue not coming before the school board, but according to Van Meter the Cingular contract was “a simple lease agreement that usually is handled in staff.”
Cote’s effort to stop the use of the flagpoles as antenna sites comes on the heels of a similar effort thwarting construction of a 75-foot communication tower in a northwest Gilroy neighborhood.
Health impacts from cellular service facilities are widely debated in the medical world. Complicating matters for anyone seeking to deny a petition to install cellular facilities is that the Federal Communications Commission does not allow permits to be denied on the basis of health concerns.
