Wyatt blasts telecoms providers, saying they ignore guidelines for locating cell towers

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This article was published 15/04/2015 (4035 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg city councillor’s frustration with a national cellular phone company boiled over at city hall Tuesday.

While councillors were discussing provisions of a new policy dealing with cellphone towers and amateur radio antennas, Coun. Russ Wyatt described telecommunication firms as “the robber barons of the 21st century.”

“One has to question the sincerity of the telecommunications companies when they say they are supporting these new rules and guidelines, but when it actually comes to practice, they are not following it,” Wyatt (Transcona) said. “That’s not acceptable in this day and age.”

Wyatt’s outburst was prompted by the futility of federal protocols that require telecommunication firms to consult with communities and residents when planning a new cell tower.

City staff told councillors at the property and development committee new national protocols are being prepared, which municipalities are being encouraged to adopt. Councillors are frustrated because while they can use zoning bylaws and regulations to control where industries locate, federal regulations over the telecommunications industry restrict a municipality’s power to essentially writing a letter of complaint to Industry Canada if it doesn’t like the site chosen for a cell tower.

City staff said the new protocols should guide telecommunication firms on those type of areas where city hall prefers cellular towers to be located, but nothing obliges the firms to abide by those protocols if they want an alternate location.

Winnipeg’s draft protocols state locations near parks and ecologically sensitive areas should be avoided for situating cell towers.

The committee postponed approval of the Winnipeg protocols for inclusion of an amendment that would require the telecommunications firms to include ward councillors in the consultation process.

Many people find the cell towers — tall and thick — ugly and esthetically disruptive. There are also concerns about the health risks posed by radiation given off by the towers.

Those were the reasons residents of Wildwood Park cited four years ago when they successfully banded together to stop MTS from building a cellphone tower behind their community centre.

“The community centre board decided not to put it in. There was a debate at the board meeting, a vote and more people didn’t want it than wanted it,” Wildwood resident Bill Jost said Tuesday evening.

In the end, MTS didn’t build the tower, and the residents took credit for it.

“Clearly, we need to address the fact cell towers can directly impact communities,” Wyatt told reporters following the committee meeting.

Wyatt said he recently attended a consultation meeting only to learn a national telecommunications firm had already decided on the location of a new 30-metre cellular tower in his ward — across the street from a playground and a residential neighbourhood — and signed a lease with the private property owner.

Wyatt said he believed the firm could have chosen from a number of viable alternative sites, away from residential areas, had the firm consulted with the community.

“We live in a modern age, we want to have our (cell) phones, but here’s an example where if there was a better process we would have been able to find alternate locations that would have pulled them away from residential areas and a park and a playground, and I think that would have been ideal,” Wyatt said.

—with files from Alexandra Paul

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca

The city's draft Antenna Systems Policy