On Thursday, February 7th , the local activist group “Morongo Valley Residents Against the Tower” held a meeting in Covington Park’s multipurpose room to spread awareness of the ongoing opposition to the communications tower proposed on BLM land on the top of the Morongo grade.
With 40 concerned residents in attendance, organizers Sara Fernandez and Evan Hoffman Jastermsky began their impressively thorough slide show presentation, chronicling where the community is at with their opposition to a communications tower proposed by Interconnect Towers LLC; a development the activist’s research claims will encroach on the community’s quality of life.
The opposition has built steady momentum since 2022, and the activist group has recently accumulated over 560 signatures to their petition. Jastermsky said BLM is currently analyzing comments from the community, which is step five of eight in the NEPA Environmental Assessment and Land Use Plan Amendment Process. Fernandez said another round of public review and comment can be expected.
Fernandez and Jastermsky re-emphasized the tower development’s various detriments to the community, including a theoretical 37% decline in property values due to combined health risks, compromised views, and noise pollution; increased fire danger from the tower’s 3000-gallon fuel storage, and risks to wildlife. They included a quote from the peer-reviewed academic periodical the Appraisal Journal in 2005, stating: “Cell sites are risk factors for certain kinds of cancers, heart disease, neurological symptoms, and other effects… linked to the fact that radio frequency fields penetrate exposed tissues.”
The activist group recently called on tribal leaders to gain their insight and assistance.
“I did a tour of the site with a tribal representative of the Cahuilla back in October and since then we met with NALC, who helped spread the word to the other tribes. That picture up there was taken a week ago when four different tribes with two people from the BLM were there with geologists. Three of the tribal leaders were elders. I have some artifacts that were found nearby with some potential significance at the site and around the site and they took a great interest in it. The fact that the BLM’s archaeological survey from ten years ago was really insufficient so after they had their private huddle, they called the two members of the BLM and they demanded a new archaeological and geological survey to determine the depth of bedrock so that they can understand kind of the age of some of the things that they’re seeing there. They said until all those documents are generated, they’re not going to be able to give their recommendations to the BLM, so really it kind of puts the project in limbo until they complete all of the documentation that the tribes are demanding,” said Fernandez to a round of applause.
Fernandez and Jastermsky said that to approve the project, BLM must sign a FONSI, or Findings of No Significant Impacts which is likely to prove difficult given the evidence the activist group has gathered. But if BLM somehow approves and issues the FONSI, the group will file a protest and appeal. For more information on Morongo Valley Residents Against the Tower, including a link to sign their petition, visit: https://www.change.org/p/stop-morongo-valley-tower
