Highest court in state to weigh in

PITTSFIELD CELL TOWER DISPUTE

BY AMANDA B URKE The Berkshire Eagle

BOSTON — The state’s highest court will weigh whether local boards have the authority to rein in cell towers.

At issue is a 115-foot Verizon tower off South Street in Pittsfield. Since it went live in 2020, neighbors have said they’ve suffered headaches, nausea, sleep problems and other negative health impacts attributed to the radio frequency emissions.

The Pittsfield Board of Health issued an emergency cease-and-desist order against Verizon after investigating residents’ complaints. The order called the tower a “public nuisance” that was a “cause of sickness,” the first order of its kind in the country, according to ProPublica. But the board rescinded the order weeks later, after Verizon filed a federal lawsuit arguing the move was preempted by the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

The residents sued, arguing that the board capitulated and abandoned its duty to protect public health in the Shacktown neighborhood.

Last fall, the late Judge Francis Flannery ruled that federal law left no room for local regulation provided a tower is operating within Federal Communications Commission standards. The residents appealed.

The Supreme Judicial Court has now decided to hear the case. At the center of the case is whether the Telecommunications Act preempts “state or local regulation of a wireless cell phone tower in connection with radio frequency emissions from the tower.”

In their filings, the Shack-town residents argue that boards of health have long been empowered under state law to protect the public from hazards, like contaminated water, noxious industries or other environmental threats.

That authority, they say, includes responding to the harms linked to wireless facilities, particularly when residents report injuries that, in their view, the FCC has refused to account for.

According to the ProPublica report, a growing body of research has raised concerns that radiation from phones and towers may cause harmful biological effects at levels below the FCC’s 1996 limits, even as U.S. regulators and industry say the risks aren’t proven.

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