By Joe McLaughlin
By a vote of 5-0, the Morristown zoning board on Wednesday approved a cellular installation atop The Monroe apartments at 30 Cattano Ave.
DISH Wireless LLC brought the application before the board to cover a gap in its coverage area.
An expert hired by the company assured the board that radio energy generated by the equipment will meet federal safety standards.
“There would be nowhere where residents of the building or people on the street level would risk being exposed to an excess amount or overage of the limit,” testified David Collins, an expert on compliance with Federal Communications Commission regulations who works for the Morristown-based Clinical Telecom Group.
Collins conducted radio-frequency exposure modeling for the project, which gauged energy generated by the antennas against the FCC’s permissible maximum.
At the ground level, radio energy from the project would be 2.9 percent of the FCC’s legal maximum. Modeling at the main roof near the antennas would be 58.88 percent of the limit.
On the lower roof, which features a community space for building residents, maximum exposure would be 1.87 percent.
While modeling predicts radio energy exposure would exceed the allowable maximum by more than 4,000 percent directly in front of the antennas, that area would be inaccessible to residents, the board was told at the virtual hearing.
“In accordance with FCC rules and DISH guidelines, we are posting caution signs at each antenna sector and guidelines about how to behave in the presence of radio frequencies,” Collins said.
Town Planner Phil Abramson questioned Collins about the health hazards associated with excessive radio energy exposure.
“I’m not a medical professional,” Collins answered, “but I’ve read the effect of radio energy on a human being causes soft-tissue heating. Long-term excessive exposure could affect your eyes or reproductive organs for males.”
FOURTH TIME’S THE CHARM
DISH tried — and failed — to come to terms with owners of three other Morristown structures before finding a willing partner in the 77-foot-tall Monroe building, which appeared on the application as 33 Washington St.
Speaking before the board, Rick Ricciardi of AMP Communications, the project’s site-acquisition professional, explained the winding process that led DISH to The Monroe.
“We negotiated with the landlord of 460 Headquarters Plaza for over a year before the landlord walked away,” he said.
“The second building we approached was 67 Park Place, but they walked away fairly quickly. Then we approached the county about their building at 10 Court St., but that also ended early.”
Those sites were closer to the DISH Wireless target area and would have required fewer variances than the project that ultimately was approved.
Before approving the project, the board asked project representatives to verify that they had, in fact, reached out to other sites in Morristown as they stated.
As part of the application, DISH will clad the antennas in a reflective material that will make them less visible from Washington Street, by essentially mimicking the condition of the surrounding sky.
The board also stipulated that DISH was responsible for removing outdated equipment from the site, and that a radio energy assessment must be conducted after construction to ensure the accuracy of energy-exposure modeling.
Another item on the agenda, a proposal for seven residential units at 65 Ridgedale Ave., was postponed until Feb. 19.
