Torn between the worries of more than 100 members of the Stella Maris Academy community and its role as an advisory board tasked with reviewing projects for compliance with the La Jolla Community Plan and the San Diego municipal code, the La Jolla Development Permit Review Committee struggled during its Aug. 13 meeting with how to proceed on a proposal to install a new wireless facility near the school in La Jolla’s Village.
The committee ultimately asked the applicant to return with more information at a later date.
The DPR first discussed the application on its initial review July 16.
The proposal filed with the city of San Diego looks to install a new Dish Network rooftop wireless 5G facility at 1135 Kline St., some 400 feet east of Stella Maris’ main campus at 7654 Herschel Ave. and about five feet from the school’s sports courts.
Stella Maris Academy, the parochial school for nearby Mary, Star of the Sea Catholic Church, serves students in transitional kindergarten through eighth grade. The school is not affiliated with the project.
The proposal includes three panel antennas, six remote radio units, three fiber-reinforced plastic boxes, a stucco panel equipment enclosure, an equipment cabinet and ancillary equipment and accessories. Should the installation be approved, it would take 30-45 days to complete.
Maverick Becker, a site acquisition specialist with Morrison Hershfield, which is serving as a consultant to Dish Wireless, previously told the DPR Committee that “the general purpose of this project is to provide new radio frequency coverage to an area not already served by radio frequency coverage.” A community benefit would be “more affordable wireless service options and faster connectivity,” Becker said.
Dish covers 70 percent of the United States and has a goal of covering 75 percent by 2025, he said. “So this project will contribute to that.”
The fiber-reinforced boxes would provide screening for the antennas and radio equipment and are intended to blend in with the Kline Street building’s roof “on the rear side … facing the school,” Becker said. “We want to make it look like an extension to the rooftop there. The antenna will be behind a new enclosure.”
He noted that wireless development is a permitted use in the area, as long as it complies with height and setback requirements.
The project’s aesthetics, height and setbacks are within the DPR’s purview, but parents and other members of the school community shared health concerns about children’s possible exposure to the higher-frequency radio waves of 5G technology — a fifth-generation wireless network intended to increase internet speeds and provide more reliable connections.
Local planning boards cannot consider the potential effects of electromagnetic fields, or EMFs, when making decisions on wireless projects.
Nevertheless, the possible exposure and its potential health effects were discussed at length.
Similar fears were voiced earlier this year about a Dish Network 5G cell tower proposed for inside La Jolla Presbyterian Church’s bell tower at 7715 Draper Ave. Parents were concerned about how electromagnetic radiation may affect children attending the church preschool and playing at the La Jolla Recreation Center across the street.
That project has been canceled.
Stella Maris location consternation
“We have been made aware of the concerns from the community and particularly … Stella Maris Academy,” Becker said.
He said a third-party firm paid by Dish Wireless had produced a report on EMF levels associated with this type of project and said the levels are safe.
The highest 5G frequency ranges from about 24.2 GHz to 52.6 GHz, Christopher Collins, a professor of radiology at New York University, told Forbes magazine earlier this year. The frequency where electromagnetic radiation starts to become dangerous is about 3 million GHz, he said.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says “the current limit on radiofrequency energy set by the [Federal Communications Commission] remains acceptable for protecting public health.”
The Rev. Patrick Mulcahy, pastor of Mary, Star of the Sea, responded that “you can say you are in [compliance] with the guidelines, but we are dealing with people who have legitimate safety concerns with the antenna being so close to where the kids play.”
“The reality is … a number of parents have voiced to us that they are going to move their kids from our school,” Mulcahy said. “That poses an existential threat to our school. … I think that is something to be considered, because it is going to have a real impact on The Village … specifically us, but it affects the whole community.”
Addressing why a location so close to Stella Maris was chosen, Charles Lindsay, a site development manager for Dish Wireless, said “a number of factors” have to align for a site to be pursued to house equipment, including a willing property owner, compliance with local codes and being in a spot that will help fill gaps in coverage.
Dish did not identify the property owner.
“We do not have another home for this location,” Lindsay said. “We reached out to other locations and property owners in the area and they either didn’t respond or it wasn’t constructable or it wasn’t something we could build and comply with the current code.”
Safety considerations
It was not clear who wrote the EMF report cited by Becker. But David Witkowski of Oku Solutions, which reviewed the report, said that in assessing such projects for safety, “we must use a worst-case scenario for all numbers … and consider the site as operating at 100 percent power level, which in practice it is not.”
He said the worst-case predicted level of EMF exposure from the ground is around 11 percent of what is allowed. But he said his personal prediction is that it would be closer to 3 percent of what is allowed.
Though the building is about five feet from the sports courts, the equipment itself would be about 20 feet up, Witkowski said. He argued that the waves emitted from that location would bypass the children playing on the courts.
“Imagine you are reading a book at night and there is a lighthouse [nearby]. You would not sit at the base of the lighthouse [to see the book],” he said. “Why? Because the light goes out and away, not down. The issue of concern for these sites is not right below it, because the pattern does not go in that direction. The antenna is designed to emit energy out to the horizon. So the fact that it is five feet back from a playground is not an issue.”
However, parents said that would mean more of the waves would be reaching the school itself about 400 feet away.
Some people attending the meeting shouted questions and comments from their seats. Others lined up during the public comment period to continue to voice their concerns.
“We request a more detailed analysis,” said parent Aubrey Eblin. “The RF report is mostly boilerplate, and a simulation methodology is not thorough enough to adequately answer the question of safety.”
Noting that Stella Maris serves kindergarten through eighth grade, some said children who attend the school for all that time would have continued exposure to the electromagnetic fields for years.
Forbes reported that more than 3,500 physicians have cited peer-reviewed scientific studies pointing to possible risks associated with lower-level radiation such as from cellphones, computers, power lines and microwaves, including cancer, cellular stress, genetic damage, reproductive changes and neurological disorders.
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences says additional research is needed but has recommended “continued education on practical ways to reduce exposures to EMFs.”
DPR Chairman Brian Will said the committee “may have our hands tied. We’re not here to arbitrate the health effects of this radiation.”
“But as trustees of this community,” he added, “I think it’s in poor form to choose the location immediately adjacent to a school playground. … This committee cannot make a technical determination to say who is right and who is wrong, but we have heard loud and clear that the community has these concerns and [that] this [project] may have an economic impact on the school.”
DPR trustee David Fremdling said, “You are the community and I am here to represent you, so if this is something you are not comfortable with, I have to go along with that.”
In deciding how to proceed, two questions need to be answered, trustee Greg Jackson said: whether and where there is a deficit in service in La Jolla that needs to be filled with this project, and a list of all the technically viable sites that were disqualified for one reason or another.
A motion to delay a vote on the project until those questions are answered passed 5-1, with trustee Glen Rasmussen opposed because he thought it should have been voted on that day. Will, as chairman, customarily abstained.
La Jolla resident Kay Plantes told the La Jolla Light that the DPR meeting left her feeling “helpless and sad.”
“It’s great that we have local committees in La Jolla … but to what real effect if we can’t stop such an egregious commercial decision by Dish Network and the … building owner?” she said.
She suggested that donors could pay the owner an equivalent fee to reject the installation or that a local group could buy the building.
“Is there a building owner on Girard or Herschel [avenues] — away from the school — that would host the installation?” she said. “I am not a parent of a child at the school, but I so hope we can find a solution for an important community member.”
The DPR Committee meets the second and third Tuesdays of each month. The next meeting is scheduled for Aug. 20, but it isn’t yet known whether the Dish Wireless project will be heard then. The agenda will be posted 72 hours in advance at lajollacpa.org.
— La Jolla Light Editor Rob Vardon contributed to this report. ♦
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