USA: Gevlucht voor een zendmast naar de woestijn, waar nu een nieuwe zendmast komt.

Lisa Anderson woonde in het paradijs; niet ver van het strand in San Diego maar zonder het te weten met een zendmast op 30 meter afstand. Nadat zij zich realiseerde wat haar gezondheidsproblemen veroorzaakte, verhuisde zij met haar echtgenoot naar een afgelegen dorp in de woestijn. Nu, enige jaren later, wil men weer een zendmast oprichten, op 350 meter van haar woning:

Bron: UTSanDiego 18 febr. 2012

SHELTER VALLEY — Imagine moving from your home on the coast to escape a nasty neighbor only to have him move next door to your new home 70 miles away in the desert.

That’s pretty much what happened to Lisa Anderson. She had lived for years in Pacific Beach — two blocks from the ocean — “in the middle of paradise,” she said. But something, something she couldn’t at first put her finger on, was wrong.

“For years I was always saying to my husband ‘Let’s get out of town, let’s get out of town.’ I felt very uncomfortable there. I couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to be there.”

Then she learned they lived within 100 feet of a cellphone tower. Anderson became convinced that microwave radiation from the tower was harming her, as was her cellphone.

So the couple decided three years ago to move just about as far away from the city as they could in San Diego County.

They came to Shelter Valley, a tiny desert community of about 350 homes, many of which are not permanent residences, about 10 miles east of Julian down the Banner Grade. They bought a small house with a great view of a desert valley and surrounding mountains. It took only a few days for her to feel better, she says. And then ...

“I first heard about the tower from my well fix-it guy,” she said.

Folks in Shelter Valley have long wanted cellular service. The mountains made it impossible. When a cell tower construction company called Mobilitie about three years ago contacted members of a community group that owns land in town they were thrilled and eventually entered into a contract to rent the company a piece of land next to the fire station and community center, about 1,100 feet from Anderson’s new home, for the construction of a 45-foot 4G “wireless telecommunication facility.”

Anderson, who says she spends as much time in Shelter Valley as she can but still commutes to the city several days of the week for business, was livid and has spent the last couple of years trying to fight its installation. The battle is all but over and she has likely lost.

The county Planning Commission approved the plans in November, and Anderson’s appeal to the Board of Supervisors sometime next month, she concedes, is likely to fail.

The tower will provide communication to the Shelter Valley area where car crashes are common along State Route S2, and brush fires routinely threaten homes and lives.

Residents have to drive several miles to the Scissors Crossing area to make a cell call.

Resident Ed Genest, treasurer of the small Shelter Valley Citizen’s Corporation, a nonprofit company of some residents formed to better the community, told the Planning Commission in a letter that recently two emergencies requiring extensive communications happened in the area. “While our regular phones were working at the homes, we had no way to contact people as we were traveling through the community checking up on people that were housebound. Cellphone coverage would have been a valuable asset.” The most recent emergency was in October when the “Great fire” burned about 2,000 acres near Shelter Valley. The community was told to prepare to be evacuate but in never came to that.

Voor het originele bericht met de vele commentaren zie:
www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jan/07/cell-tower-follows-woman-coast-desert/ .

Lees verder in de categorie Verhalen | Terug naar homepage | Lees de introductie