Last updated April 12, 2019
The citizens of Monterey Park in the northeast of Calgary in Canada are engaged in a fight to stop a cell phone tower being built in their community – for the second time. Homeowners in the neighborhood are outraged by plans by Shaw Communications to erect a twenty five meter high cell phone tower in the parking lot of a local church.
“It’s such a magnitude, you can’t even imagine how it would be to drive up here to see this twenty-four seven and to live with the impact would be devastating, not to mention what it will do to property values,” says local resident Patti Yanke. What is even more upsetting for Yanke and others in the community is that this is not the first time the locals have had to go to war to prevent a cell phone tower being built in Monterey Park. The last time was nine years ago in 2001 when Bell Mobility attempted to build their own tower situated right next to Yanke’s house. Local pressure forced the City of Calgary to reject the proposal. Now locals are infuriated that they have to be embroiled in a similar battle all over again. “I don’t believe it should be happening once, let alone twice,” Yanke observes.
She is not the only one with those sentiments either, with local city councilor Ray Jones saying that communities which reject cell phone towers being built in their limits should not have to fight the same fight all over again just because the proposal is coming from a different cell phone company.