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Last Spring the U.S. House of Representatives’ powerful Subcommittee on Communications and Technology held a hearing on a tall stack of individual bills authored by the telecommunications industry and introduced by friends of the same.
What came out of this mass of bills – 19 to be exact – was one monster of a bill that was slapped with a number, H.R. 3557, and given a patriotic name, the American Broadband Act of 2023. Yet in a country where local control is as coveted as 4th of July parades and baseball, H.R. 3557 is anything but American. It removes the last vestiges of local control when it comes to cell tower siting. H.R. 3557 is a dangerous bill, and it could come to the House floor at any time.
Make your voice heard at every level – municipal, state and federal. Ask your mayor to reach out to state leaders. Ask state leaders to contact federal leaders. Contact your Congressman and Senators. State leaders can be found here. Federal representatives can be found here. Spread the word. Your rights, your privacy and your land are at risk.
H.R. 3557 represents an unprecedented usurpation of local governments’ authority to manage public rights-of-way and land use. The bill favors wireless, telecommunications and cable providers over local governments and private landowners. It preempts local rights-of-way and franchise authority in a ‘giveaway’ to cable and telecommunications providers.
The bill also waives historic preservation (NHPA) which further erodes preserving local landmarks. H.R. 3557 waives the National Environmental Protection Act or NEPA rules; the FCC never established a regulatory limit for flora and fauna with respect to radiation from cell towers so they remain not only unprotected but perilously at risk.
It is deeply troubling that H.R. 3557 was reported out of Committee without any opportunity to hear from local leaders to explain not only why this legislation is not needed, but how it will result in harmful preemptions and unconstitutional takings.
Local governments oppose H.R. 3557, yet it continues to skate through committees as powerbrokers throttle the voices of local leaders. Members of the National Association of Counties (NACo), the National League of Cities (NLC), the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) and the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA), oppose this federal overreach into local land use, permitting, and franchise negotiation decisions.
H.R. 3557 allows for the elimination of local rights and will cause suffering to local communities. It would allow cable, wireless and telecommunications companies to access the public’s rights-of-way. This bill would eliminate franchise renewals that support many community functions including Public, Educational and Government (PEG) Channels.
Additional concerns have to do with health risks associated with RF radiation from towers, as well as privacy and surveillance capabilities of the same. In August 2021, the second highest court in the land, the Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington D.C., sided with two nonprofits that sued the FCC for failing to even look at the science for the vast majority of health concerns, including children, when creating radiation guidelines more than 27 years ago and for failing to update the guidelines since 1996. The Court sent the guidelines back to the FCC to conform to the science, and all the FCC has done is make it easier for telecom to steamroll local governments.
Why is the FCC, whose job it is to regulate communications by radio and advance the public’s interest and safety, so committed to the expansion of the telecommunications industry and so willing to bully local governments into submission and so intent on protecting telecom profits even at the risk of a public health crisis and destruction of the environment? Radio communications are carried on microwaves that travel invisibly through every living cell – plant, animal, human. Towers are ugly and disruptive. Few truly want one in their front yard or next door.
If H.R. 3557 proceeds and becomes law, the public will get nothing in return from it except further erosion of privacy, health, environmental, historical, property and local governance rights. The beneficiaries will be the corporate entities that authored this monstrosity in the first place, with a little help from their friends in Congress.
