A Los Angeles Superior Court Judge ruled last week that two county code changes, approved by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors in 2023, violated state environmental laws regarding the construction of telecommunication towers.
The ruling comes a year after the supervisors voted to amend changes to county code that gave more power to telecommunication companies to construct cell phone towers on both private and public land around the county.
The ordinance eliminated discretionary conditional use permitting for most wireless telecommunication facilities and stripped away requirements for environmental impact review.
L.A. County Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant ruled on March 27 that it violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and determined that the county didn’t have the authority to permit telecommunication companies to build without review and environmental oversight.
This caused an environmental and legal coalition – that includes nonprofits like Mothers of East LA and Fiber First LA – to sue Los Angeles County, fighting for better environmental protections and the public’s right to hold hearings and voice their concerns about towers sprouting in their communities, which was threatened after the ordinance passed.
Boyle Heights resident Brenda Martinez, a representative of Fiber First LA, worried that without the lawsuit, people across the Eastside could lose their voice to appeal plans to construct wireless towers. Fiber First LA works to bridge the digital divide without 5G wireless technology.
“Before they approved those ordinances, if they were going to place an antenna or a cell tower, whether it was close to your home, your children’s school, your daycare center, your church and the park, they would have to notify people 300, 400, 500 feet away,” Martinez said, citing a state code in the lawsuit that requires “at least one public hearing on the discretionary permit” for wireless telecommunications facilities.
Mitchell Tsai, an attorney representing the coalition, said the ordinance passed last year was deeply flawed.
“The ordinance couldn’t be categorically exempted because it would have impacts on state scenic highways, as well as impacts on state historical sites,” Tsai said, implying that wireless structures could be built outside of historic structures like the Breed St. Shul without notification or opportunity to appeal before permitting.
Other members of the environmental coalition include California Fires & Firefighters and Boyle Heights Community Partners. Notably, Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is on the coalition’s litigation team. Kennedy’s campaign has garnered controversy for spreading conspiracy theories around 5G towers and false claims about vaccinations.
Boyle Heights residents protested in mid-March claiming the fire risk of the towers and constant radiation exposure added to the cocktail of environmental hazards plaguing the Eastside.
Odilia Gomez and her husband live in the vicinity of a cell tower near the corner of Whittier Boulevard and Orme Avenue in Boyle Heights.
“I think it’s bad for us, our community, and our kids. We are the poor community,” Odilia Gomez said. “That’s why they don’t think about us. They don’t care.”
Another demonstrator during the March rally, Baldomero Capiz of Boyle Heights, carried a sign that read, “Radiation is invisible, just like lead. Not another Exide,” referencing the contamination disaster that bled from the former Exide battery recycling plant in neighboring Vernon.
“We’re here because the big corporations are taking advantage of lower-income communities. We as a community want to make sure that this infrastructure that they’re pushing in is infrastructure that is not going to harm us,” Capiz said.
There are more than 300 telecommunication towers within a three-mile radius of Boyle Heights, according to data provided by antenna databases. Several are owned by cell phone companies like Verizon or T-Mobile, but the city of Los Angeles and LAPD license several towers on the Eastside, as well.
The lawsuit filed by the coalition claims that there is “Ample scientific evidence that a wireless project can often so sicken local residents that it constructively evicts whole families who can no longer tolerate continuous exposure to non-ionizing radiation emitted from small cell and macro cell towers.”
The FCC sets exposure limits and regulates development of new cell towers and along with public health organizations continue to assess public health impacts. While the FCC says there is no reason to believe cell towers pose health risks to nearby residents or schools, most experts agree that more research is needed, especially for any possible long-term effects.
Tsai said that once the final judgment is issued in May, the Board of Supervisors can vacate the ordinance and may rework it to not violate CEQA standards. The coalition hopes for more than that, as Martinez stressed the importance of community wants and the potential for hazards.
“We’re not against this technology. We just need to be smarter about how we use the technology and how we provide this internet access to lower-income communities,” Martinez said.
