TOWERING ISSUE Proposal at Portarlington meets tower of objections

A PROPOSED Optus mobile phone tower above Portarlington’s CFA building – directly opposite the town’s primary school – has met with fierce opposition from the local community.

Portarlington Primary School children and their parents converged near the site last week to highlight to CPS Global that they did not want six panel antennas and associated support structures and cabling attached to an existing CFA lattice tower, located at 8 Fisher Street.

Father-of-three Murray Buchanan said the consultation plan identified a number of locations as community-sensitive locations, but this proposed location was close to one of the most sensitive areas in Portarlington.

“The Portarlington Primary School has upwards of 230 children in attendance on a daily basis and so I am strongly of the opinion another site has to be found and therefore object to this proposal,” Mr Buchanan said.

“It is my opinion that this consultation process is a ‘tick in the box’ exercise to  select a preferred site with no regards to the minimising of EME (electromagnetic energy) exposure to the most vulnerable in our community who attend the local primary school.”

Parent Gabrielle Waller said it was not that the tower wasn’t wanted in the area, as reception for the Optus network could be very poor, but that the community strongly objected to the location of the tower.

Two Australian Government agencies, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) and the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), are responsible for regulating RF EME exposure.

ARPANSA has developed a public health standard that sets limits for human exposure to RF EME.

They state that the limits are set well below the level at which adverse health effects are known to occur and include a wide safety margin to protect the public.