Chris Cote, who works with the U.N. and on African AIDS issues,
is fighting city hall over microwave exposure
He doesn’t wear a cape and he’s not immortal, but Gilroy’s Chris
Cote has played a super human role in the global effort to educate
people on health-related issues from the South Valley to South
Africa.
Chris Cote, who works with the U.N. and on African AIDS issues, is fighting city hall over microwave exposure
He doesn’t wear a cape and he’s not immortal, but Gilroy’s Chris Cote has played a super human role in the global effort to educate people on health-related issues from the South Valley to South Africa.
After five years teaching sustainable agriculture to South Africans and teaching them how to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, the man whose work earned him a United Nations invitation to the World Summit on Sustainable Development has a new health mission in Gilroy.
Cote’s drive to educate turned local when he learned a company wanted to put up a hilltop microwave tower, which he maintains that medical science shows could pose a health risk to local residents.
While Cote recognizes that the towers serve a high-tech purpose, there is a growing concern among medical professionals worldwide over the long-term affects that the radiation-emitting towers could have on nearby populations.
“There’s a body of evidence out there to suggest that radiation is not good for you,” said Cote, who is waging a campaign to get the city to ban towers in areas that could endanger the health and safety of citizens.
Cote’s passion for the issue first arose when he was notified by the city that a San Francisco-based company was planning a high-frequency tower just steps from his home near the intersection of Mantelli Drive and Welburn Avenue.
“I was the only person who was notified because I was the only one within 100 feet of the project,” said Cote, an astronomer who studied under Carl Sagan. “I have an understanding of how radio waves work, and I didn’t want my young niece and nephew who live right down the street from me to be exposed.”
The good news for people who share medical concerns about microwave transmissions is that it was Cote who was notified in the first place. If anyone else had been notified, the tower might have gone up without a hitch, as others have before it.
Cote, a longtime advocate of environmental and health issues, feared that the tower could have an adverse affect on the local community and started his drive, which now includes Dr. James Grisez, the chief of surgery at St. Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy.
“There is ample evidence in the medical literature to indicate that such a source of electrical energy is hazardous to the health of those living nearby,” Grisez wrote in a letter to the city.
Grisez, Cote and a host of physicists, concerned citizens and, most powerfully, cancer survivors, formed a standing room only audience at a recent Planning Commission meeting at which the tower near Cote’s house was denied. Now the group wants the full council to ban them altogether, or at least carefully regulate where they may be placed.
The concern is, said Cote, that like second-hand cigarette smoke 25 years ago, some government agencies are slow to acknowledge the dangers. There is a growing body of medical evidence, said Grisez, that the waves emitted from these towers have a very high absorption rate when they come in contact with anything in their path.
Absorption of the waves impacts the physiology of the body, many medical studies say. Over time the constant bombardment by the intense frequency can alter a person’s DNA by forcing it to divide faster than it should, which ultimately can lead to various types of cancers and disease – especially in children and fetuses, whose cells are dividing 16 times faster than those of adults.
Prior to the commission’s September meeting, Cote kept in regular contact with members of the board and other city officials about the tower’s potential dangers. He also knocked on roughly 400 doors in his neighborhood to get the word out.
Planning commissioners listened to the evidence and sided with Cote’s group. In October, the request for a conditional use permit to put up an 80-foot microwave tower on Welburn Hill on top of Reservoir A-the city’s primary drinking water supply-was shot down by the Gilroy Planning Commission.
Physicists in attendance testified that living next to the tower would be akin to standing in front of an open microwave oven 24 hours a day. Cote viewed it as another health issue in line with his ongoing work internationally.
“The plight of the people of the sub-Saharan is so different from what the people face here. But just as I wouldn’t want to see a child infected with AIDS over there, I wouldn’t want a child in Gilroy to get exposed to harmful radiation here. The two situations are completely different, but I don’t want to see children harmed in anyway.”
A long-time activist
Cote attacked the issue with the same passion he has used to work on other issues, such as AIDS in Africa. His passion came about after a trip to South Africa in 1987 at the age of 26. At the time Cote, who is financially set after selling three businesses he founded, went there to explore the area and fell in love with it.
Shortly after his initial trip, he became involved in educational programs in African school systems.
“Gilroy is a city of 40,000 people. Imagine if 10,000 of them had AIDS,” said Cote. “That’s what they are dealing with over there-a quarter of the population.”
Eventually Cote got involved in the education and prevention programs because the people were oblivious to the disease’s real cause. In recent years, he has been under contract with the Mpumalanga Department of Education to inform children of the disease by teaching them in the public schools. Despite intervention, Cote has seen a huge explosion in the number of children who are getting sick over the last 10 years.
“They are often taught by tribal elders, grandparents and parents who, for example, have said that if you have sex with a virgin, you cure it,” he said.
While he wears many hats, Cote is officially the chairman and CEO of the Hollings Cartaway Hunger-Relief Foundation that helps feed the hungry, educate about AIDS/HIV and teaches locals the American way of farming. He spends about 10 days a month in Africa.
Gilroy fight ongoing
In Gilroy, his first battle was won. But Cote is concerned that other microwave towers could sprout up throughout the city. And without a permanent city ordinance in place, the concern is that the company that made the request, Zinc Technologies, or others in the future could bypass the planning commission and appeal directly to the city council for approval.
“Nobody has ever tried to put one of these up on Reservoir A,” said Cote, who has collected nearly 500 signatures petitioning the placement of high-frequency towers within 2,500 feet of any home, school or water supply in the city. “The fact that that tower was defeated doesn’t mean that we are safe. They could go up in other neighborhoods. I don’t want these towers anywhere in Gilroy.”
One obstacle hampering Cote’s plight is that similar towers are used for police and fire services.
“We need these particular antennas because of public safety,” said Gilroy City Councilman Charles Morales. “We are more or less dependent on them. We really need to look at the whole issue more and study it and see if there are any negatives created in our neighborhoods because of them.”
According to Morales, Cote’s efforts will soon put the issue on the agenda at a future council meeting, which will result in a vote on the subject.
But Cote isn’t convinced that the council will approve such an ordinance.
“One council member told me that I’m probably getting more radiation sitting in front of my computer than I would get from the tower,” he said.
In addition to Cote’s concerns over how the council would vote are his worries over the current leasing of city-owned property for similar uses. Gilroy officials, it seems, have no idea where all of the towers are located.
“We do have some towers, but I don’t know the details of their usage,” said Morales. “We’ll need to do a full report on all of this.”
City Administrative Services Director Mike Dorn confirmed the locations are not all comprehensively documented.
“There are a lot of cell phone sites all over the town,” said Dorn. “Most are privately owned. The city has a well site on top of Country Estates (Mantelli Drive) that’s used for cell phones. Well sites are typically good because they are located at the high points. There is a tower there that’s owned by a company and they rent the piece of land it sits on. I think they pay us around $1,000 a month for about 100 square feet, but I’m not sure.”
Dorn went on to say that the police station has multiple towers on the site and the fire station has one. Every city truck also uses transmission towers.
As far as private industry goes, there is no way of telling exactly how many microwave towers there are in Gilroy because they don’t require permits if they fall under a certain height and are located in industrial-zoned areas.
The lack of accountability worries opponents.
“I want to make it clear that I am not against technology,” said Cote. “But there are other areas where these could be placed, like the eastern hilltops. Also, the police and fire departments do use these but it’s not a constant. And that is the real danger.”
In addition to the health concerns over the waves constantly entering the city’s main water supply and the effects of long-term exposure to humans, Cote has other concerns about similar towers.
He is concerned that the 80-foot high towers would be unlit and be some 300 feet above the valley floor, hampering low-flying emergency aircraft in the event of a fire.
His campaign is far from over.
At every city council meeting he updates the dais on the issue and lets them know how many members of the community signed the petition to oppose the placement of similar towers throughout the city.
In the age of ongoing terrorist threats, Cote is also concerned that towers located near any of the city’s water sources could pose a threat to security if the company that puts the tower up has access to the area at anytime.
“Similar projects may also lower property values, particularly if it is proven, like second-hand smoke was, that nearby broadcast radiation is cancer causing,” said Cote. “When it comes to radiation, it’s best to err on the side of safety.”
