In Sagaponack residents continued last week to push back at plans to erect a 100-foot cell tower just south of Sagaponack Village Hall off Montauk Highway, with residents calling it an “eyesore” that cuts against village character and others raising concerns about the health effects of the 5G technology it would support.
“We had a myriad of people banging at the door to get a tower up as soon as possible,” Mayor Bill Tillotson said at a village board meeting on Aug. 21. Now, however, residents have begun voicing displeasure.
While the plans have been in the works for over a year, there is not yet a start date for construction, the mayor said.
At the meeting the mayor spoke of the importance of the tower for first responders, who rely on wireless service when on emergency calls. Sagaponack lies on the Montauk Highway route that ambulance drivers take from Montauk, Amagansett, Springs, and East Hampton to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital.
The way service is now, “If you’re on the beach and somebody’s having a problem in the water, how do you call?” the mayor said over the phone. The Bridgehampton Fire Department, which also serves Sagaponack, often tells him it does not have service in the area, he added.
Among the loudest voices of opposition at the Aug. 21 meeting was that of Karina Forrest, a baker at Loaves and Fishes in Sagaponack who said she is worried about the radioactive effects of the 5G technology that the tower will support, an area she said has not been studied extensively enough.
The Federal Communications Commission has concluded that “no scientific evidence currently establishes a definitive link between wireless device use and cancer or other illnesses.” Because of this finding, the F.C.C. does not permit municipalities to act on concerns about radiation, the mayor explained later over the phone.
“It hasn’t been around long enough for anyone to know,” Ms. Forrest said in a conversation on Friday. Loaves and Fishes is located across the street from the proposed site for the tower.
Ms. Forrest organized a petition asking the board to find an alternative location for the tower and created a flier urging people to attend the meeting to “help us stop construction of the 5G cell tower.”
She was the first member of the public to speak at the village board meeting last week. “There are several who will be close enough for it to directly affect them,” Ms. Forrest said to the board.
The mayor pointed out that there are cell towers near the Southampton Elementary School and Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, giving him confidence that the health risks are minimal.
After listening to the petitioners’ request, however, Carrie Thayer Crowley, a board member, said, “maybe we should find another site” and asked how much it might cost to move the tower.
“You’re opening a can of worms that I’m not willing to go down,” Mayor Tillotson said. “To try and reinvent the wheel is not what we’re going to do.”
The village has already approved the tower and signed a 55-year lease with Homeland Towers, which will build it. Verizon, AT&T, the Dish Network, and T-Mobile are all expected to use the tower, according to earlier reporting. The village is to get 40 percent of the gross revenue from it. Based on what he knows about the contracts in other municipalities, Mayor Tillotson said, that is “a very good cut.”
The village would have to break that contract to relocate the tower. “To move it somewhere else is very expensive,” he said to the group.
“This felt like it wasn’t discussed before the last moment the contract was signed,” said Laura Hayward, expressing skepticism about the process. While the proposal was in the planning phases for over a year, the project was approved in the winter, when many Sagaponack residents are not here, dissenters argued.
There had been opposition at the time, particularly from Lee Foster, who owns property with employee housing for Foster Farm staff. The tower would be 30 feet from her rear property line and less than 100 feet from the house. The board decided that the greater benefits of improved wireless service outweighed the concerns.
It was only after the contract was signed that residents voiced substantial concerns, the mayor said over the phone after last week’s meeting. Now, he said, it is too late for the village to back out. Had there been significant opposition earlier, “maybe we would have tried something else.”
Ms. Forrest said Friday that she “was happy to have a turnout of residents who are in support of an independent investigation. . . . That’s really what we want: to seek other options.” And if the board is not swayed, she said she is prepared to go to court to oppose the tower.
