Last Spring the U.S. House of Representatives’ powerful Subcommittee on Communications and Technology held a Hearing on a tall stack of individual bills actually authored by the telecommunications industry and introduced by friends of the same. What came out of this mass of bills – 19 to be exact – was one particularly egregious bill, H.R. 3557, given a patriotic name, the American Broadband Act of 2023. Yet in a country where local control is as coveted as 4th of July parades and baseball, H.R. 3557 is anything but American. It is a dangerous bill, and it could come to the House floor at any time.

Make your voice heard at every level – municipal, state, and federal. Ask the mayor to reach out to state leaders. Ask state leaders to contact federal leaders. Contact your Congressman and Senators. Spread the word. Your rights, your health, your privacy, and your land are at risk.

H.R. 3557 represents an unprecedented federal usurpation of local governments’ authority to manage public rights-of-way and land use.  The bill favors wireless, telecommunications and cable providers over local governments and private landowners. Very unfortunately, the state of RI (along with about two dozen other states) passed a bill in 2017, The Small Cell Siting Act, which likewise favors the telecommunications industry over local cities and towns. This “streamlining” of small cells has caused harm and must not be extended to the entire country.

Significantly, the bill waives historic preservation (National Historic Preservation Act), which further erodes preserving local landmarks. H.R. 3557 also waives the National Environmental Protection Act or NEPA rules. The FCC never established a regulatory limit for flora and fauna with respect to radiation from cell towers, so they remain not only unprotected but perilously at risk. It has been scientifically established that radiofrequency radiation travels invisibly through every living cell – plant, animal, human--negatively affecting biological processes.

It is deeply troubling that H.R. 3557 was reported out of Committee without any opportunity to hear from local leaders to explain not only why this legislation is not needed, but how it will result in harmful preemptions and unconstitutional takings.

Local governments oppose H.R. 3557, yet it continues to skate through committees as powerbrokers throttle the voices of local leaders. Members of the National Association of Counties (NACo), the National League of Cities (NLC), the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) and the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA), oppose this federal overreach into local land use, permitting, and franchise negotiation decisions.

Unaddressed concerns have to do with health risks associated with RF radiation from cell towers and small cells, as well as privacy risks and surveillance capabilities of the same. In August 2021, the second highest court in the land, the Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington D.C., sided with two nonprofits that sued the FCC for failing to even look at the science for the vast majority of health concerns, including for children, when creating radiation guidelines more than 27 years ago and for failing to update the guidelines since 1996. The Court sent the guidelines back to the FCC to conform to the science, and the FCC has done nothing to comply with the Court’s decision.

Why is the FCC, whose job it is to regulate communications by radio and advance the public’s interest and safety, so committed to the expansion of the telecommunications industry and so willing to bully local governments into submission and so intent on protecting telecom profits even at even at the risk of a public health crisis and destruction of the environment? Knowing the litany of harms from these installations, who would want a tower or small cell in their front yard or next door? Real estate values (and therefore tax revenue) declines when these towers and small cells are erected near residences.

If H.R. 3557 proceeds and becomes law, the public will get nothing in return from it except further erosion of privacy, health, environmental, historical, property, and local governance rights. The beneficiaries will be the corporate entities that authored this egregious bill in the first place, with assistance from their friends in Congress. Please make your voice heard!

Sheila Resseger, M.A. is the Co-Founder, 5G Free RI; a Board Member of Toxics Information Project; a Retired Teacher, RI School for the Deaf and a former sign language interpreter at the Community College of RI.