Debates Grow As Towers Multiply

Deep in the heart of Meadow Pointe lies a cellular phone wasteland.

Glenn Johnston knows it well.

"There's times when I have to go outside and stand a certain way to use my phone," said Johnston, chairman of the Meadow Pointe III Community Development District.

Johnston hopes the community's communication problems will be solved when T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless and AT&T switch on their antennas atop the 150-foot tower recently erected in front of his community's clubhouse. The tower should become active at the end of the month, he said.

"There's a lot of people out there that a cell phone's all they have," Johnston said. "And that area's been a dead zone."

The CDD's decision mirrors the choices of hundreds of landowners in Pasco County and across Tampa Bay, who have become landlords to the region's rapidly expanding wireless communication network. County officials have approved new towers on either side of Zephyrhills in recent weeks and are reviewing another planned for the campus of Trinity College of Florida in southwest Pasco.

The decision to host a tower comes with its perks, such as thousands of dollars in rent each year and a stronger signal for an array of suddenly indispensible devices. There are also problems, including contracts that run for decades and the still-unsettled debate over the threat cell tower emissions pose to human health.

The downsides aren't preventing people from making cell phone deals, though. Since 2006, more than 730 towers have gone up from Hernando County south to Sarasota and east to Polk. Nearly all of them were cell phone towers, according to records from the Federal Communications Commission.

In that same period, tower builders put up more than 100 structures in Pasco - more than triple all the towers built in the county between 2000 and 2005. Nearly a dozen have been built or approved so far in 2009.

Towers have gone up in cow pastures, RV parks and in backyards. More recently, builders have sought out schools and other public sites to host towers.

Competition for tower sites even prompted one tower owner, Kenneth Keith of Zephyrhills, to urge county officials recently to deny permission for a new tower near his home as a way of forcing that tower's future tenants to move to the tower on his property. County officials denied his request.

Not everyone's happy with the towers they have.

Mary Berling inherited a tower when she bought the Beginning Point RV Park on State Road 54 near of Zephyrhills. Berling gets a flat $8,000 a year lease for the tower owned by American Tower Co.

Berling complains that the tower takes up the highest point in the low-lying property, which flooded heavily during 2004's hurricanes, denying her the chance to shift tenants to higher ground.

Ann Brooks, spokeswoman for Seattle-based T-Mobile, said the growth in towers reflects the recent explosion of wireless computers and "smart phones," such as iPhones and BlackBerrys. Many people demand strong signals everywhere they go, pushing towers off highway corridors and into residential areas, she said.

The demand for greater service led providers to seek out Long Middle School in Wesley Chapel as another location for a tower.

The as-yet unbuilt school tower has raised concerns among people who say the high-frequency radiation emitted by the towers poses an unacceptable health risk to children.

Research varies widely regarding the potential harm of living in the shadow of a cell phone tower.

Cell phone companies cite research that finds few effects. Opponents have their own studies that raise questions about long-term exposure to radio-frequency emissions like those sent from cell phones. A National Academy of Sciences 2008 study reported there's a lot of room for future research into the cell phone emissions' effects on children and pregnant women.

In recent weeks, parents groups in Hillsborough County have urged school leaders there to ban towers at schools. However, school officials expect to see more than a dozen new towers on school grounds.

Pasco school officials say they've seen no convincing evidence that a tower on school grounds threatens children's health. Along with the tower planned for Long Middle, the district inherited a tower near State Road 52 and Chicago Avenue in Hudson when it bought property there for a new high school.

"In my reading of those documents, I'm not worried," said Ray Gadd, assistant superintendent for support services.

Under its contract with the tower builder Tech Tower Partnership LLC, the district stands to make $20,000 for each antenna added to the Long Middle tower and rent of $9,000 to $12,000 a year from each tower tenant.

The district hasn't decided how to divvy up the revenue from the tower, Gadd said.

Extra income also helped sway the board of the Meadow Pointe III CDD in favor of hosting the flagpole-shaped tower.

"That type of money can be put back into the clubhouse or can keep the CDD fees down," Johnston said.

But Johnston said some CDD officials were more concerned with controlling the look of the tower. Officials didn't want a metal "lattice" tower or a tower disguised as a pine tree. So, like other tower landlords in Pasco, they'll get an enormous flagpole, along with an American flag to fly from it.