NAHANT — The Nahant Board of Selectmen met this week to discuss recent changes to the Wireless Telecommunication Zoning bylaw.
In light of the ongoing discussion of the wireless facility project involving Crown Castle and T-Mobile, Planning Board Chair Sheila Hambleton joined the meeting to explain the proposed changes, which reflect both correcting the proper name while including the new section 13.08 and other amendments that outline the process that both Crown Castle and leasing carriers must take, from application to design and requests.
“The very first article would be way too confusing and far more questions being asked like, what is EME? What is MPE? And it’s been mostly about multiple permissible emissions on radio frequencies, and there are FCC rules and regulations,” Hambleton said.
Hambleton praised T-Mobile and Crown Castle for being “very good and gracious” when working with them throughout the process, of which she said that they were well within all the rules and regulations on levels of exposure that currently exist.
“They were well within all the rules and regulations on levels of exposure… currently everything is good,” she added.
When asked why this would matter to Nahant residents, Hambleton stressed the importance of clarity, revealing, “I have heard that there may be another carrier coming through, and they may want to upgrade their equipment. They will have to do the same report and will do an accumulative report too, not just a single-carrier report. It’s more important because all of them are operating at the same time, usually, and sometimes all at noon time, or all at four o’clock or eight o’clock in the morning. So, those would be the highest amount of emissions during a particular day.”
If an additional carrier is added, Hambleton touched on the importance of the bylaws reflecting the process in the modern day.
“Those are the kinds of things that we were looking for, and we kind of had a lack of enforcement within the text of our zoning – this section and consultant fees, they were not in line with today’s fees because this was written in 2009. There were some things that just needed clarification,” Hambleton added.
A public hearing will now be held on April 14, where residents can comment on the proposed bylaw revisions before the Board comes to its decision and also discuss the updates to the tower. Prior to that, the Planning Board is also looking to meet with Crown Castle and T-Mobile as well.
“At the moment, because this was fueled by a building permit application, we were going to just hold an informational meeting with Crown Castle and T-Mobile and our consultant prior to the public hearing on the 14th, and that we were only gearing for, you know, 20 minutes to a half hour,” she also said.
