Q & A: The Minister for the Environment on cellphone towers

BY JIM CHIPP - THE WELLINGTONIAN

All over New Zealand there has been outrage in communities as cell phone service providers install their base stations in the suburbs.

In the past week a caller has complained Telecom was beginning to install antennae on a neighbouring building already hosting a Vodafone aerials, another said Telecom, Vodafone and Two Degrees have each built a tower within 50 metres of his Kelburn home and a Johnsonville resident was aggrieved about a Telecom site being built next to his home. None were given any notice.

The proliferation of cell phone and wireless broadband transmitters without resource consent was enabled by a new regulation enacted by the Labour-led government in March last year.

The National Environmental Standard for Telecommunications over-rode the Resource Management Act and allows any facility that meets maximum permissible emission levels and dimensions to be installed as of right on any road or road reserve.

Residents have complained about lack of consultation, particularly when it leads to towers appearing in residential areas, where they could have been installed, for instance, in a nearby cemetery.

Other complaints have been that companies generally do not share towers, and some scientific advice to keep them away from children and pregnant women has been ignored.

Prime Minister John Key has reportedly undertaken to take the environmental standard back to Cabinet for review.

The Wellingtonian put these issues to the National government's Minister for the Environment, Nick Smith.

Wellingtonian: Will Cabinet reconsider the environmental standard?

Smith: I don't put any reliability on any of the claims about the PM and what the PM might or might not have said. I wouldn't give that too much credence; it's all very second hand. The first thing is: I support a national environmental standard on radio frequency control. It is a nonsense having each of our 84 councils trying to establish what the safe levels of radio frequency are in communities.

To put it frankly, it doesn't matter whether you're in Invercargill or Kaitaia the health impacts, or otherwise, of radio frequency communications is exactly the same. So I support the principle of there being a national environmental standard. It's consistent with the broader direction that National is taking around the Resource Management Act and that is a greater degree of consistency through this country on standards.

I've received quite a lot of communication from individuals and communities concerned about cell phone towers. There are three petitions currently before the select committee. I'm expecting the report from the parliamentary select committee prior to Christmas. I'll be doing further work on the issue and on the national environmental standard after I receive that report and we'll be reporting back to Parliament by about April next year. Government is required to report within a period of three months.

Now there's quite a lot of misinformation around the national environmental standard. The first is that a huge number of councils around New Zealand had no rules at all and so in many areas the national environmental standard has put a level of protection that was not there for those communities.

Secondly, in an area like Wellington, the national environmental standard actually puts a greater requirement for resource consents for cellphone towers than existed before the national environmental standard. Well, that is what I am advised by officials. Previously, every council had its own rules around this and the national environmental standard came into effect and there are rules in the national environmental standard both around the levels and also around where they can be sited. In Wellington, for instance, I was advised that the national environmental standard, which overrides district plans, actually provides a more restrictive regime than existed in the previous regime.

There is potential for councils, through their district plans to make rules around the amenity element for the visual impact of cellphone towers but they can't overall, or pre-guess rules around the radio frequency and, in my view, that is eminently sensible.

Wellingtonian: Are those rules appropriate? There is precautionary advice coming from a variety of sources about not exposing pregnant women or children to radio frequency radiation.

Smith: Look there is all sorts of stuff on the net. The science around cellphone towers is pretty robust; the advice from the World Health Organisation and from our own expert committee was that the current standards are more than adequate to safeguard the public. People have asked for 100 per cent safety. In the real world 100 per cent doesn't exist. But the level of certainty around the safety of cellphone sites is very strong and if we were going to go about banning cellphone sites, to be consistent, we would also be banning microwave ovens and the use of cellphones because the levels of radio frequency that people are being exposed to are very low and totally consistent with the World Health Organisation. Yes, there are some countries that have decided to go even tighter. It's also important to point out that the New Zealand standards are consistent with World Health Organisation standards and the actual levels of radio frequency from these towers is a very small fraction of that which is allowed.

Wellingtonian: So you consider it is safe even for children at this level?

Smith: Yes.

Wellingtonian: Currently there is no requirement at all for companies to co-locate. Is that something that could change?

Smith: The select committee, I know, is quite interested in this idea of co-location. The Commerce Commission has recently advanced this issue, quite sensibly, in making it in providing stronger incentives for co-location.

Wellingtonian: So that is one of the areas that you are looking at?

Smith: That is one of the areas that I am looking at. One of the issues is that often co-location will reduce the visual impacts of cellphone towers on neighbourhoods but the problems is that an initial applicant will build their cellphone tower to the height restriction that is provided in the district plan and to co-locate the logical thing is to put a small extension on top but this would require further consents and it is easier to install a new pole.

That is what advisers are hearing. My view is that we should re-look at that and see whether the both the commerce rules and the resource management rules make it easier for co-location.

Wellingtonian: Are you confident that the process by which the standard was set was fair?

Smith: I am going to wait judgement on that until I hear the select committee report. The select committee is having look at that and I want to keep an open mind until I read their report.

Wellingtonian: Do you think it's had the desired effect? The stated aim was to speed up broadband roll out and increase jobs.

Smith: That was not the only objective. Remember we had a large number of councils in which there were absolutely no rules at all around safe levels of radio frequency and if the telecommunications industry was irresponsible they could have installed cellphone towers that would be so powerful as to pose a health risk Wellingtonian: There was always a standard.

Smith: The standard had no legal status. It is the national environmental standard that gave legal status to the radio frequency standard. And I will just state again that having every council in New Zealand pay highly expensive technical experts to try and work out what was the safe level is for radio frequency as was the system before the national environmental standard. It was just a nonsense. For a little country of 4.5 million people this would only result in an increased cost for ratepayers and for mobile phone users for little or no health gain. I'm happy to have a debate about what the national standard is about the safe level of radio frequency and what to ensure that the standard ensures public safety but I am result that we will have one national standard and not every council trying to be an expert on ... safe levels of radio frequency.

Wellingtonian: Why did the Ministry of the Environment take on this job? Wasn't it the job of the Ministry of the Economic Development to advocate for the telecommunications industry?

Smith: But the Ministry for the Environment has not been an advocate. The Ministry for the Environment's job is to regulate for the environment. Radio frequency is covered by the Environment Act and it is absolutely the job of myself, as the minister, and also the ministry as the policy agency responsible for the Resource Management Act to be setting the environmental safe levels for radio frequency.

I am expecting to get the report before Christmas. The only other point I would make is that council's do have the power to identify areas in their district in which for amenity or other reasons they do not want cellphone towers.

Wellingtonian: But they couldn't do that next to a school because the safety issue is beyond their authority.

Smith: The councils are there to regulate the amenity side. What they can't do is that the issue of safe radio frequency level is determined through the national standard.