This website is designed to help the community fight the cell phone antennas. These cell phone antennas are being proposed by Verizon for the location on top of the school building at St. Martin of Tours Church on Central Avenue in Bethpage, NY.
There are ten proposed antennas to be put on top of this building!
Say NO to the Cell Phone Antennas
THINGS WE CAN DO
If you oppose this, we are still keeping the online petition open,
Please make sure to send in a letter to the
Zoning Board of Appeals, 74 Audrey Avenue, Oyster Bay, NY 11771
by April 21, 2008 letting them know of your disapproval
of this proposed project.
Send an e-mail to the Diocese of Rockville Centre or call them at (516) 678-5800 Ext. 400 to let them know this is wrong!
Let your friends & neighbors know of the
dangers of electromagnetic radiation
MEETING UPDATE
The meeting on Thursday night went as well as could be expected. Verizon brought in several lawyers and experts to try to establish why it needed to go on the church building due to dead spots & being the only facility available. Verizon used an unrealistic standard as to how to determine
dead spots and provided insufficient information as to why this
was the only facility available.
We were informed that the Board could not consider health reasons as an argument to deny this. So, the residents that were there brought up property values, being over-burdened by enough environmental concerns, etc. Alternative locations were discussed, including Sleepys (which we just found out already has 9 antennas on its roof from one of Verizon's competitors), the Grumman facility & the Bethpage water tower - the one on the Grumman facility (which Verizon was in negotiations with,
but failed to disclose to the Board).
Verizon was reprimanded as to its inability to provide proper information. One of Verizon's experts on RF was asked a direct question about the extend to which cell coverage would be increased by putting these antennas on a higher location. Verizon's attorney instructed their expert not to answer the question. Toward the end of the meeting, the Board
let residents know that they rebutted every expert that Verizon
provided & came well prepared.
The meeting concluded with the Board giving Verizon an additional two weeks to submit information as to why the Grumman sight in not a viable alternative. The Board also gave all the residents present, as well as those that couldn't make it, the opportunity to submit any additional comments to the Board during those two weeks, which ends April 9th.
I urge all of you who really oppose this, to do so. Their address is Zoning Board of Appeals, 74 Audrey Avenue, Oyster Bay, NY 11771.
After the meeting, some of us discussed continuing with this fight by creating a community coalition. As some of you may be aware & from what I have discovered, even if the Board of Appeals rules in our favor, Verizon can sue the town & usually wins. So, we may have a long fight ahead of us. I am hopeful, however, that after hearing many parishioners speak at the meeting, the church reconsiders this proposal. If you are opposed to this & would like to continue fighting this, I am creating a separate e-mail group for this purpose. If you would like to be included, please let me know. I believe that if we stick together, our chances are good to get this put into a non-residential area - away from our schools!
(I do want to put a disclaimer here. This website was put together by a lifelong resident of Bethpage on behalf of concerned citizens in Bethpage. It was not put together by a professional company or, as some people have suggested, Verizon's competitor. This website is meant to be informative & that is all. I urge you to do your own research on the potential health hazards & potential decline in property values. The information on this website was just a result of some of our own research. Additionally, this website is not intended to come down on the church or its parishioners. The only intent of this website is to organize those residents who wish to oppose this cell phone antenna.)