About 50 Fair Haven residents turned out for a special meeting of the zoning board last night to object to a proposal by two wireless phone carriers to build a 125-foot-tall cell tower next to the Church of the Nativity on Ridge Road, the Asbury Park Press reports.

Some of the complaints centered on the purported health effects of radiation from the tower. From the story:

“The tower is proposed to be over my backyard. I’m concerned for my five children,” Marianne Grosso of Dartmouth Avenue said. “If it’s perfectly safe, it can go somewhere else where there are no people.”

However,

The board’s radio frequency expert, Bruce Eisenstein, testified that the tower proposed by Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile is about 400 times lower than the Federal Communications Commission standard for electromagnetic emissions.

“That puts it substantially below FCC limits,” Eisenstein said. “That’s all they (the applicant) have to show.”

The longrunning debate over where to place a tower promises to go on.

The Zoning Board of Adjustment tentatively set a special meeting for Aug. 9, at which Borough Council President Thomas Gilmour will testify on behalf of the borough and a consultant about the feasibility of an alternate site being pursued by Fair Haven.

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