Cell phone towers have been a recent debate in the City of San Mateo. With over 450 towers spread across the county, many individuals are concerned about the health risks these cell infrastructures bring to the community, especially near residential neighborhoods and schools.
Small cell infrastructures are radio equipment that help wireless services and deliver 4G (Fourth Generations and 5G (Fifth Generation) mobile technology. These tools are critical in communicating emergencies with the public and maintaining reliable wireless networks.
However, many community members such as Lindsay Raike and Irena Mavridis are questioning the research behind these infrastructures.
Irena Mavridis works in healthcare as a nurse, she recalls the moment she received a message about a small cell infrastructure from the city.
“And I come home and I get this notice and it looks like spam. I didn’t exactly know what I was looking at…I opened up the letter and [it says] that a small cell facility is coming within 500 feet of your property…I didn’t quite understand, like, a small cell facility, what is that? What is it for? [It] took me a [few minutes] to … understand what was being proposed [but] it gave us five days to appeal” said Mavridis.
From this moment on, she began to take a serious approach to the topic. Mavridis began contacting experts such as Dr. Joel Moskowitz who works at the UC Berkeley Public Health Department. One of her driving concerns was the radiation small cell infrastructures bring to schools and neighborhoods.
From the information she gathered, Mavirdis and local community member, Lindsay Raike, helped form a group called, The No Cell Outs. Their slogan, “don’t cell out San Mateo,” is used to spread information on cell towers to the community.
At NDB, Mathematics and Computer Science Teacher Annmarie Papp is also concerned about the topic, especially when it comes to installing more towers.
“Instead of … building anymore [cell towers] … just making sure that every time a provider wants to increase their bandwidth, like 4g 5g or next, that they’re they’re paying rent to whoever owns the cell tower because it’s their job to to maintain the cell cell tower and make it safe … without building more,” said Papp.
As of November 18th the City of San Mateo has introduced an update to San Mateo Municipal Code Chapter 17.10, which will create more regulations on installing small cell infrastructure. The city’s website states that they have, “adopted a City Policy for small cells in the public right-of-way to provide reasonable and consistent guidelines to help streamline the permitting review and approval process, convey design preferences, and minimize visual impacts.”
These steps will encourage lawmakers to look deeper into the small cell infrastructure topic and possibly implement more changes over the next few years.
