Cell phone tower worries Rosewood residents
Mysterious metal poles are popping up in Scarborough's neighborhood plazas, and at least one residents' group says they aren't welcome.
The Rosewood Taxpayers' Association has asked Bell Mobility to drop plans for a telecommunications tower on Montezuma Trail, but despite its pleas and petitions, the company hasn't agreed.
"There is a growing critical mass in the neighbourhood against this thing," Courtney Fisher, the group's president, said this week.
Legally, Fisher admitted, the residents may not have a leg to stand on.
It's the federal agency Industry Canada, not a city government, that has exclusive power to approve or block a telecommunications tower.
Toronto Council in 2008 passed a protocol on tower construction its members hoped Industry Canada would follow, but towers 15 metres or shorter are exempt.
Conveniently, the Montezuma pole and others like it are exactly 14.9 metres tall.
Fisher said he knows this, but after hearing of the proposal two weeks ago Rosewood residents, concerned about the tower's possible effect on local property values, aesthetics and human health, hoped Bell would act like a good corporate citizen and move the structure somewhere else.
Bell was invited to send representatives to the group's annual general meeting next week to discuss the tower, but declined, Fisher said.
He's not the only one concerned the proposed pole is in the wrong place.
Last month, David Driedger, an assistant city planner, wrote to Duane Lovelace of Altus Group, a company acting for Bell on site acquisition, about the proposed Montezuma pole location at Alexmuir Boulevard west of Brimley Road as well as another Bell wants to place at a plaza on Kennedy Road at Southlawn Drive.
Both plazas border on houses. Driedger told Lovelace he would "strongly encourage" Bell to find locations not in places designated as a "Neighbourhoods" area in the city's Official Plan.
Chin Lee, Fisher's local councillor, backed Driedger's position, saying he believes the Montezuma location "is not in the interest of residential neighbours."
Lovelace reminded Driedger such towers were exempt from consultation requirements but said Bell would "send out 'construction notices' to the residents who reside within three times the tower height."
Fisher, however, said close neighbours of the plaza reported they hadn't seen the notices, which promise construction will take place during normal business hours and apologize for any inconvenience.
"They say they have done it but none of the residents, not even the vendors in the plaza, know about it."
Staff in the office of Mike Del Grande, a councillor in Agincourt, said the poles have already surprised residents by sprouting in other spots, including one along the south end of a plaza at Glendinning and Pharmacy avenues.
Lovelace told Driedger he would be happy to meet with city staff or councillors to discuss the Montezuma project. When contacted Tuesday for an interview, however, he said a Bell Mobility employee would answer a reporter's questions but that employee is unavailable this week.
The city's telecommunications protocol was passed after a Guildwood church signed 20-year lease with Bell in 2007 to erect a 35-metre tower on the property, producing revenue church members hoped to use for charitable work.
Hundreds of residents objected, arguing the tower would be an eyesore and put the health of children in homes or schools as much as 1,000 metres away at risk. Bell eventually allowed the church to cancel the contract and chose a location outside Guildwood.
Bell and other telecommunications companies say their towers comply with Health Canada regulations on electromagnetic radiation exposure, but Toronto's protocol asks companies to follow a Prudent Avoidance Policy 100 times more stringent.
The protocol requires companies to notify residents by first class mail if they live within 400 metres of a proposed tower, but Industry Canada isn't legally bound by it and a height exemption exists.
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