Friends and Neighbors in Rancho Mission Viejo,

Rancho Mission Viejo (RMV), the master developer, has gone back on their word. They announced this week they will turn on the Verizon Canyon House cell tower, the tower they agreed to keep inactive and dismantle after hearing the community’s heath and safety concerns.

Last year, the community spoke out against the activation of the Verizon Canyon House cell tower in Esencia, which is 150 to 1000 feet from homes, the Esencia K-8 school, and Montessori school. A passionate group of community members showed up in droves at the RMV board meeting to communicate the health risks of close-proximity EMF near homes and schools. As a result, Jeremy Laster, the Executive Vice President of RMV, agreed to work with Verizon to keep the tower inactive and relocate it to a safer location. However, on Tuesday, March 31, Mike Balsamo (SVP of Gov. Relations for RMV) communicated that RMV has provided consent for Verizon to activate the Canyon House tower this week.

RMV is not listening: the community does not want this cell tower active. So what is their true motive?

Mr. Balsamo said it was in response to calls from community members with poor cell phone service. However, RMV took no information from the callers: they don’t know their name, location in the community, cell phone carrier, specific issue (and duration of issue), whether it’s new/existing service issue, or whether it was the same group of people repeatedly calling. They also did not ask for bandwidth data from any cell provider in the area to determine if the demand was exceeding the supply. RMV did absolutely no homework on the actual challenge, yet they claim that only turning on a Verizon cell tower would resolve the issue?

RMV claims that the Canyon House cell tower activation will “only be 4G” and “only for 6 weeks” while Verizon works to deploy two temporary cell towers. However, Mr. Balsamo’s said, “we will try our best to have it on for only 6 weeks,” but cannot commit to a firm deadline. Additionally, 4G towers emit plenty of dangerous EMFs, as documented by all current international studies showing health risks within 1300 feet, and the Canyon House tower is as close 150 feet from homes in Esencia. This Is unacceptable.

My friends, we need your support again. It is more urgent than ever. We are in our homes all day and all night due to the Governor’s Stay at Home order and will now be exposed to close-range dangerous EMFs. We cannot protest in-person, and there are no board meetings to attend to voice our concerns. Please take the time to sign this petition. And after you sign it, please send this petition to your neighbors and any other members of the community and urge them to do the same. We need your advocacy to ask RMV to turn off this cell tower and dismantle it immediately.