Mendham Township, N.J. – The residents here, among the wealthiest in the nation, pay top dollar to live in this quiet place, happily trading convenience for woodsy acreage and maple-lined streets.
So when Verizon Wireless proposed building a 150-foot-tall cellular transmission tower atop one of the highest hills in town, local officials said no, thinking local zoning laws would dictate where the tower could be placed. They were wrong. In the next few months, residents will see the tower go up, visible from most parts of the town.
Their losing battle is becoming commonplace as hundreds of communities across the country wage the same fight against cellphone companies and the march of spindly, metallic and freakishly tall antennas into quiet, affluent precincts of suburbia.
The towers, sometimes disguised as trees, cacti or flagpoles, were once confined mostly to sparsely populated stretches of road or industrial zones.
More are being planted in residential areas as the wireless companies – responding to subscriber demands – race to build their networks for seamless coverage.
Ed Donohue, a lawyer based in Washington who has represented wireless carriers in several cases, estimates that more than 500 cell- tower disputes across the U.S. have ended up in court.
As carriers expand their networks to cover more residential areas, they are invoking the federal telecommunications law, which allows them to ask either a state or federal court to overturn a local zoning decision to reject a tower if that decision has the effect of prohibiting the provision of cellphone services. The carriers, more often than not, are winning the legal skirmishes.
The problem, says Laura Alt schul, director of national siting policy at T-Mobile, is people “want the service, but they don’t want the facility near where they live.”