Sunrise Terrace residents fight against a cellphone tower proposed next to their homes due to health concerns and lower property values 

Retired senior Ethel Landers has lived at Sunrise Terrace in Arroyo Grande for the past few years. She takes pride in the community she shares with her neighbors in the mobile home park for those 55 and older.

"We have lovely facilities, a big hall where we have parties; we've got a fabulous pool that's heated year-round; we have a full gym, we have tennis courts, pickleball courts, a dog park," she told New Times. "It's just the perfect place to retire, and our home values stay up because of it."

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• Photo From Sunrise Terrace Mobile Home Park's Website
• FIGHTING BACK Homeowners at Sunrise Terrace, a mobile home park for those 55 and older, are fighting to prevent the construction of a cellphone tower close to their community.

However, this past year hasn't been stress-free for Landers and her neighbors, who learned about a new Verizon cellphone tower that could potentially take shape about 100 feet away from their community.

"We didn't get any notices in the mail about this; one person got a phone call in the office," she said. "If that message would have been ignored, the one phone call we got, we would have been up a creek."

The message informed Sunrise Terrace residents about the cellular provider's proposal to install a new 5G "stealth wireless communications facility" in the shape of a 55-foot-tall fake water tower located at 789 Valley Road in Arroyo Grande.

Sunrise Terrace board of directors President Tony Kobliska told New Times that residents weren't happy with the proposed location being so close to their community for reasons including poor planning, stress, a loss of property value, and the potential exposure to radiation.

"This would not only be a possible physical hazard, but it could be a mental health hazard where people are absolutely worried coming in and out [of the park]," he said. "We're in our senior part of our lives, and we have people that are end of life, and we have health care providers here and something like that could really affect them mentally. I'm just really concerned about that, and I think there's enough stress on seniors as it is, and to have this on top of it is something that I just don't want to tolerate."

Before retiring to Sunrise Terrace, Kobliska worked for AT&T for 40 years. He said he spent the latter part of his career maintaining the company's cellphone towers in the 13 Western states.

"I've had a lot of experience with these kinds of issues, and I think Verizon just kind of thought that they could just come walk right in and take that and nobody would question them," he said. "But we have, and now they actually have to go back to the drawing table and do their due diligence and find an alternative location."

During the Feb. 6 Arroyo Grande Planning Commission meeting, the staff report stated that the location was selected with several considerations in mind, including technical requirements as defined by radio frequency engineers, topography, radio frequency propagation, elevation, height, access, aesthetics, feasibility of colocation and alternative sites, and amenability of the property owner regarding the negotiation of ground space, according to the staff report.

Kobliska said making it a water tower design is ridiculous because there's no way anybody is going to "mistake that cell tower for a water tower sitting in the middle of a vacant lot with no water anywhere around there."

"We have to look at it going in and out of our gate because that is the only entrance and exit gate we have," he said. "It would be right next to our homes, and the park would be looking at this water tower every day, when right now we have a very nice view of the mountains and the hillsides and the fields, and all of a sudden now we're going to have this unsightly cell tower."

Landers said she's read studies from the National Board of Realtors that claim living within half a mile of a cellphone tower can drop your home value by 20 percent.

"I'm 74, and I'm really depending on the value of my home supporting me in case I need to go into a care facility," she said.

On average, the potential external cost of a wireless tower is approximately $4,132 per residential property, according to a 2018 statistic from the Journal of Real Estate Finance & Economics that the National Board of Realtors posted on its website.

Arroyo Grande Planning Commissioners agreed with the residents and denied the proposed tower, finding that the project was inconsistent with telecommunication requirements and the city's general plan.

"Specifically, the location of the proposed facility regarding unreasonable interference with views, incompatibility with surrounding architecture, failure to demonstrate the infeasibility of colocation, and the lack of substantial landscaping to obscure the facility," a staff report from the following Planning Commission meeting stated.

But the battle isn't over. Verizon appealed the decision. At a July 23 Arroyo Grande City Council meeting, City Attorney Isaac Rosen told mobile home park residents that the city is currently in a tolling agreement with Verizon meant to provide a good faith time by which Verizon could evaluate a potential alternative site.

"At this time, I know city staff is working diligently with Verizon to follow up on the status of that application," he said.

Landers and her neighbors are urging the City Council to take into account the exposure to radiation that her community could face.

"We know how dangerous these things are, and as senior citizens, we're a vulnerable population. We are much more likely to have an adverse effect to radio frequency than say a 30-year-old strong man," she said. "We've read that fire departments across the U.S. are pulling out of having cell towers on their stations because the firemen were getting sick."

The International Association of Firefighters (IAFF) opposes using fire stations as bases for cell towers due to a lack of researched studies on the health effects of exposure to low-intensity radiation and the effects of radiofrequency radiation on the central nervous system and the immune system.

"Furthermore, most studies that are the basis of this position are at least five years old and generally look at the safety of the phone itself. IAFF members are concerned about the effects of living directly under these antenna base stations for a considerable stationary period of time and on a daily basis," the IAFF stated on its website.

The IAFF claims that internationally acknowledged radiation research shows that transmissions from digital cellular antennas and phones have critical effects on people and animals, such as an increased cell growth of brain cancer cells, changes in sleep patterns, headaches caused by radiation exposure, etc.

In a Radio Frequency Electromagnetic Fields Exposure Report that Verizon presented to the Planning Commission, the cellular company claims that the proposed site at 789 Valley Road in Arroyo Grande is far enough away from any buildings that the exposure levels are below the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) threshold, which is 0.08 watts per kilogram averaged over the whole body.

"Verizon takes very seriously the health and safety of our employees and customers, and of all residents in the communities we serve," Corporate Communications Representative Lauren Peterson told New Times via email. "All Verizon facilities, including the small cells that Verizon is deploying to provide 5G service, are required to comply with the FCC safety standards."

Landers said she doesn't oppose adding more cellphone towers, but she doesn't agree with adding them to residential areas when Arroyo Grande is chock-full of farms and ranches that would serve as better sites and allow property owners to make some extra money.

"I think the city needs to update their cell tower citing agreements because no one should have these things moving over their homes," she said. Δ

Reach Staff Writer Samantha Herrera at [email protected].