The tower was supposed to go up within eyeshot of the Westbury neighborhood, a 150-foot rod that would boost cell phone service for the region's T-Mobile users.





Developers knew it would be a tough sell - they had already tried to put the pole somewhere else nearby, but they withdrew their permit application after homeowners complained that it would look ugly. T-Mobile compromised by picking a new site about a mile west of downtown - a wooded, triangle-shaped patch at 800 Peninsula Ave. with big trees and a slatted fence to screen it from view.





But dozens of neighbors said no again, and City Council members unanimously killed the plan last week even though Portsmouth planning commissioners recommended they vote it through. Facing mounting opposition from the small neighborhood, the telecommunications giant will have to find yet another location for the tower or give up on expanding coverage there.





"The presenter has chosen to submit another application that is even more intrusive into the new Westbury community," neighbor Lawrence Owes wrote to Portsmouth Planning Administrator Jonathan Hartley. "The community's opposition is stronger now than before."





Neighbors declined to speak with The Virginian-Pilot, referring a reporter to more than 30 opposition letters they sent Hartley. In them, they voiced concerns about how the tower might affect their quality of life, their property values and their health.





In a statement, T-Mobile said it's trying to "address the challenges of coverage and capacity with denser networks and infrastructure that incorporates different technologies to solve the complex challenges of transporting vast amounts of data."





In other words, the company needs to build more towers near the customers they serve to keep up with growing demand for cell phone service.





Industry experts say service providers often hit hurdles at the local level when they try to build new towers - lots of people consider them nuisances, plus there's little definitive research on their health effects.

"It's for the carrier and the town to figure out what they want to do, because, of course, there's a trade off," said Dileep Srihari, who oversees public policy issues for the Arlington-based Telecommunications Industry Association. "They're not getting the service that T-Mobile can provide."

As carriers build more and more towers, community groups across the country are organizing to keep them out of their neighborhoods, said Joshua Steinfeld, an assistant professor of public service at Old Dominion University who specializes on the topic.

Steinfeld said appealing to their elected representatives is the only option many people have to keep carriers from building near their homes, because rules regulating the construction of cell phone towers are loose and scattered.

Another group of neighbors in Portsmouth's Cavalier Manor neighborhood complained last year about a tower T-Mobile proposed along the 3600 block of Victory Boulevard. Council members denied that permit, too, before giving T-Mobile the OK last week to put it in a more remote location behind the Victory Crossing Shopping Center.

Because the placement of cell phone towers depends so largely on community outcry, they often get pushed toward low-income areas where residents are less likely to make noise.

"There needs to be consistency applied so that local government isn't overwhelmed by community voluntary initiatives," Steinfeld said. "Then officials can rely on some standardized public policy so that there's more clarity in terms of what's acceptable and why."













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