Kirkland pushes to have backyard cellphone antenna removed

Cellphone tower exploits loophole

Cheryl Cornacchia
The Gazette
Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Town officials are continuing to press for the removal of a cellphone tower that went up in a residential neighbourhood in Kirkland about two weeks ago without the municipality's knowledge or consultation with local residents.

Kirkland town officials will meet again Friday with representatives of Rogers Communications, the Canadian cellphone service provider that installed the 14.5-metre lamppost-style cellphone antenna in the backyard of a home on Acres Street.

The two sides have already met once, last Friday, but, no agreement has been reached about the installation.

"We are demanding it come down," Joe Sanalitro, Kirkland's director general, said Monday.

In an email exchange, Sanalitro said, the town has not given up its fight to see the antenna removed even though Industry Canada regulations, as they stand, do not require Canadian cellphone companies to hold a public consultation or to obtain a municipal permit before erecting a cellphone tower that stands less than 15 metres high. Their only obligation is obtain consent from a property owner.

The Gazette has attempted to reach the property owner, in this case, Richard Murdoch of 75 Acres St. However, Murdoch has failed to return messages.

Meanwhile, the tower in Murdoch's yard, which, according to Sanalitro, is not yet functional, has sparked interest well beyond the borders of the West Island municipality.

On Friday, Francis Scarpaleggia, the Liberal MP for Lac St. Louis, called on Christian Paradis, the federal Industry minister, to explain the rationale behind the federal government's regulations and how they exempt telecommunications providers from consulting local communities before installing cellphone towers with a height less than 15 metres.

"Most people would agree an installation of that height constitutes a major structure, especially in a residential neighbourhood," Scarpaleggia said, in a release.

"It is quite clear that Rogers had a duty to consult Kirkland city council and local residents before contracting with a homeowner to locate the tower in question on their property, even if there was no requirement to do so."

The loophole in federal regulations is also expected to be raised by municipal officials at the annual meeting of Federal of Canadian Municipalities, scheduled to be held in Saskatoon in early June.

Even though cellphone towers have become increasingly commonplace on church steeples, in industrial parks and on the roofs of high buildings, a cellphone tower in a residential backyard is a new and worrying beast, said Peter Kettenbeil, a consultant with Sevag Pogharian Design, a Montreal-based architectural and general contracting firm.

Kettenbeil said even though Health Canada allows cellphone towers in residential neighbourhoods so long as they meet certain criteria, last year the World Health Organization issued a warning about the dangers of cellphone towers based on the ongoing research on the biological effects of weak electromagnetic fields.

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