2023-06-03 BBILAN Progress Report
BBILAN Progress Report (2022-2023)
Overview
It has been a fertile and productive eight months since our last report. We have advanced our existing cases and added several new and exciting collaborative initiatives.
Protecting Lake Tahoe
Eisenstecken et al. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) et al. The wheels of justice turn slowly. We are waiting on the federal court in Sacramento to rule on our Opposition to TRPA/Verizon’s et al. Motion to Dismiss. Judge Nunley has been replaced by an able new federal justice, Daniel J Calabretta. Notwithstanding our considerable effort to appeal to all the national environmental organizations beginning with the Sierra Club and NRDC, as well as U.S. Senator Feinstein (CA) and California Governor Newsom, not one has expressed the slightest interest in safeguarding Lake Tahoe, an international environmental treasure, and the legacy of John Muir, Mark Twain, and Theodore Roosevelt. The fault is not in the law. The California/Nevada Interstate Compact and the Lake Tahoe Regional Plan provide ample protection against the massive invasion of small cell and macro cell towers that are emitting dangerous levels of polarized non-ionizing radiation (p-NIR). Article VII of the Compact requires that TRPA address these serious public health and environmental hazards in a comprehensive environmental impact report, before wireless companies like Verizon are permitted to unleash dangerous levels of p-NIR on the public. But we have now entered an Age of Defiance where wireless companies and government bureaucrats believe they can act in open disregard of law, and are getting away with it with impunity.
Miller v. Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board (LRWQCB). On behalf of local residents we petitioned the LRWQCB to investigate industrial discharges of microplastics contained in faux plastic camouflage of macro cell towers that shed and are degraded into Lake Tahoe. The Lake serves as a food source and drinking water supply for the Tahoe community and via the Truckee River for millions of people downstream as far as Reno, Nevada. Neither LRWQCB nor TRPA has shown the slightest interest to investigate this serious environmental and public health hazard.
Complaint to FCC. Our co-counsel Robert Berg has filed a letter with the FCC pointing out that Verizon continues to operate one of its cell towers in flagrant violation of an existing FCC regulation prohibiting such operations during ongoing litigation.
Legal Actions Under CEQA and Other Statutes
Fiber First Los Angeles (FFLA) et al. v. Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (LAC-BOS). On behalf of several California grassroots organizations, as well as Americans for Responsible Technology (ART), Children’s Health Defense (CHD), and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, BBILAN has helped to organize a legal team and joined with local counsel, Law Offices of Mitchell Tsai, and Scott McCollough, lead litigator of CHD’s Electromagnetic Radiation & Wireless lawsuits, in filing a lawsuit challenging the LAC-BOS’ illegal enactment of two amendments to Ordinance Titles 16 & 22 of L.A. County. Plaintiffs are alleging that the LAC-BOS ignored its obligations under CEQA by asserting a Categorical Exemption without establishing any environmental record for this arbitrary conclusion. Other Counts in the lawsuit allege that the County Planning Department has publicly acknowledged it has no environmental competence; and further has violated California’s Constitution by issuing permits to telecom companies to erect small cell and macro cell towers on public rights of way, and even on or near private property, without even affording property owners or renters prior opportunity to be heard. The case will likely go to trial in Q1 2024. If the telecom companies and the LAC-BOS can get away with stifling the public’s fundamental right to be heard, it will set a dangerous precedent that will certainly be cited throughout California and the rest of the nation.
AB-965/1065. BBILAN-affiliated lawyers have provided a legal analysis on these two environmentally retrograde bills. AB 965 currently being debated in the California Legislature evidences the latest attempt to dispose of legal protections of the public by allowing telecoms to apply for batch permits, thereby accelerating approvals under the FCC shot clock rules. Whereas under prior conditions such an action would have triggered a CEQA review, AB-965 is the latest attempt to gut or repeal CEQA. Here again it is startling that none of the national environmental organizations have come to CEQA’s defense.
AB-1065 represents a cynical attempt by the wireless industry to divert billions of dollars in federal funding earmarked for safe and energy efficient broadband wired applications, to unsafe, cyber-insecure, energy wasteful, climate change unfriendly wireless applications.
FDA Petition. BBILAN assisted ART in crafting a Petition demanding that the FDA comply with the 1968 Radiation Control for Health and Safety Act. This latest action with the FDA filed on May 24, 2023 follows an earlier citizens’ petition demanding that the agency stop promulgating false, misleading, and deceptive claims and images on its website suggesting that public exposure to p-NIR is tolerable, and even safe for teenagers who hold cell phones next to their heads. The earlier action was dismissed by the FDA.
Federal Administrative Actions
Administrative Conference of the U.S. (ACUS)/Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). BBILAN filed letters with the Chair of ACUS under its convening authority, and CEQ under the Clean Air Act, to convene the principal concerned federal agencies—EPA, FCC, DOL, OSHA, DOC, and others—to address the environmental and public health effects of massive public exposure to p-NIR from electronic products, pointing out that millions of people in the U.S., especially the most vulnerable citizens—children, the disabled, elderly persons, economically disadvantaged and minorities—are especially at risk, and in many cases becoming seriously ill. ACUS has declined to take any action, notwithstanding that it was uniquely positioned and authorized to take such action. CEQ’s Chairlady has not vouchsafed a reply, even though a former General Counsel to CEQ co-signed the letter.
International Advocacy
Challenging ICNIRP. BBILAN has convened several meetings of international scientific organizations and lawyers to assess various actions intended to counterbalance the biased and one-sided influence of the industry-captured ICNIRP on international agencies like the World Health Organization.
International Declaration on Protecting Children from RF Radiation. The first project is an International Declaration on Protecting Children from RF Radiation. The Declaration seeks to supplement the 1959 UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child and European conventions. It also highlights the special hazards of exposing children to dangerous levels of p-NIR, and converting for corporate profit the most private information of these children without their or their parent/guardian’s consent. The International Declaration is the first of its kind to point to children’s basic human right to be free of exposure to p-NIR, invasion of privacy, and subsequent addiction to wireless products and their apps. The Declaration also addresses the problems of enforced child labor in mines in impoverished countries like the Republic of the Congo, where children spend their lives extracting minerals like cobalt used in electronic products (lithium batteries) manufactured mainly in China and then exported to western countries.
Satellites. The Satellite Experiment proceeds relentless and heedless of eight domains of risks that we have pointed out in prior filings with FCC in March 2020 and March 2021. In fact, the FCC has informed Congress that the agency intends to rewrite its Categorical Exemption under NEPA for satellite operations, presumably to render it even more friendly to the satellite industry and against the interests of the international public. BBILAN has provided its members with news summaries of the accelerating militarization of Space and the expressions of concern from the scientific community over Space debris, a near-collision with the Chinese space station, and interference with astronomical research, all of which are largely being trivialized by the industry and responsible national and international organizations. BBILAN is currently assessing various legal actions with its international scientific and legal colleagues.
Pending Projects
Fiber First New York—Collaboration with Odette Wilkins and Wired Broadband Institute. We are forming a veteran litigation and professional negotiation/advocacy team to support Odette Wilkins in her valiant efforts to safeguard New York City from an unprecedented infestation of small cell and macro cell towers, especially targeting NYC’s minority communities. Our anticipated legal actions will coincide with our colleague Bruce Kushnick’s just released expos´ of Verizon New York’s 2022 Annual Report, which according to Kushnick’s detailed analysis reveals massive accounting irregularities.
Gaiapolis
As part of its mission to empower local communities, BBILAN is collaborating with TANDO , an Action-Think Tank in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to pilot test an ambitious global initiative, Gaiapolis, that envisions 10,000 cooperating sustainable compassionate cities by 2030 that will rely heavily on wired broadband. Gaiapolis builds on the experience with Technopolis, an initiative originally based at the University of Texas in Austin led by our colleague, Dr. Fred Phillips. Over 30 years the Technopolis Initiative developed an impressive track record of best practices that cities in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Latin America adopted to stimulate high levels of economic growth driven by “economically strategic technologies.” Gaiapolis adapts the Technopolis knowledge base to the urgent challenges of 21st century cities. We are exploring a pilot project in Santa Barbara and the California Central Coast, with the possibility of significant investment from Japan, which is a pioneer of optical fiber applications for decentralized information/communications infrastructure. (Please see Conversation on Gaiapolis Santa Barbara with Sheridan Tatsuno and Fred Phillips. See also: Julian Gresser Partners in Prosperity—Strategic Industries for the U.S. and Japan (1985); also Sheridan Tatsuno, The Gaiapolis Strategy.)
Publication of Julian’s Autobiography/3rd Edition of Piloting Through Chaos: The Explorers Mind/Collaborative Learning Platform (justclick.earth). Albert Einstein famously observed: We cannot solve the problems of today with the same kind of thinking that created them. Julian Gresser’s just published autobiography, How the Leopard Changed Its Spots—Evolutionary Values for an Age in Crisis, expands upon Einstein’s axiom by adding three practical competencies that can be especially useful for empowering local communities:
“Intertidal Thinking”—The intertidal Zone between the shore and sea, continuously washed by the tides, is among the most biologically fertile areas in nature. It is the same with inspirations, discoveries, and innovations. We can learn to harvest the intertidal nature of our own minds and address difficult problems in new and fresh ways.
Big Heart Intelligence (BHI)—BHI connects the wisdom and intelligence of the Heart to emergent evolutionary values that Julian’s autobiography urges are critical to personal, community, and planetary survival. BHI activates a powerful energetic field located around the Heart which can be experienced as Love.
Resilience Multiplier—When intertidal thinking and BHI are focused in action, that connects the Heart’s energy fields of Love and Qi; the direct and immediate result is resilience. This resilience powerfully multiplies when the benefits are “paid forward,” in other words, passed on in tangible acts of generosity and kindness to others without asking anything in return. We may be surprised that a very small number of people working creatively and compassionately together can begin to turn our topsy-turvy world toward peace, mutual understanding, and joy. The 3rd edition of Piloting Through Chaos provides a proven methodology to transform intertidal thinking and Evolutionary Values into practical and measurable results.
Beginning in the summer of 2023, BBILAN will offer a series of training programs on these three core life capabilities, focusing on the great challenges that concern our members. We welcome your thoughts and suggestions on how this series can be most valuable to you and your communities.