Latest News
Auto Repair
Blinds
Building/Remodeling
Floor Refinishing
Insulation
Landscaping
Landscaping
Lightning Rods
Moving
Overhead Doors
Which of the following actually happened?
Patient to doctor: “Doc! I broke my arm in two places. What should I do?� Doc: “Stay out of those places.�
“Patient to doctor: “Doc! It hurts when I do this. “Doc: “Don’t do that.�
“Patient to doctor: “Doc! The physical therapy exercises that you prescribed after my back surgery make everything hurt. “Doc: “Discontinue the exercises.�
Welcome to the Vaudeville School of Medicine. For a long time now we have heard the advice to “listen to your body and it will tell you what it needs.� They say that if a toddler is presented with a variety of foods, he or she will instinctively choose what is needed, craving greens at one point and then starches, etc.
Well, my body craves potato chips and ham sandwiches and likes a nap after a big meal and a beer.
I have been very conscientious about this stuff for most of my life and guess I can feel pretty good about myself now. Today we have learned all about nutrition, disposing of those “bad� foods that I grew up on: sugar and red meat. We learned about health foods, like wild rice grown in Asia.
I, of course, subsisted on a diet of Wonder Bread, Frosted Flakes, mayonnaise sandwiches, bacon, “steak tartar� (raw hamburger), butter and Kool Aid.
It’s a funny thing. When we evaluate the results of all of this, we seem to overlook a few things.
The whole time I was growing up all I ever heard was how much bigger and healthier we were. A 6-foot high schooler became common. Unexpectedly, life expectancy increased, to the chagrin of Social Security.
In the health food department, if you took a close look at the countries where they seemed to live almost exclusively on “health food,� you found a population that was short-lived, short of stature and in which malnutrition periodically carried off a fair percentage.
Curiously, with all our recent “improvements� in nutrition, we seem to have an epidemic of overweight people and inexplicable food allergies. Sugar substitutes are causing some people headaches and other issues. Gluten, a component of bread (the “staff of life�) is another villain.
Coffee, on the other hand, once vilified, is now good for us again. In the old Woody Allen comedy, “Sleeper,� which takes place in the future, they tell him that smoking, once thought to be bad for us, is now good for us. I rest my case.
Time for my cholesterol meds. I guess pizza is not nature’s perfect food after all. Oh yeah, of the three cases at the beginning, the third was the real-life scenario. The advice worked out just fine.
Bill Abrams resides (and considers the pros and cons of modern medical advice) in Pine Plains.
Related Stories
Get Local News Delivered To Your Inbox
Subscribe to receive stories reported for, by, and about our neighbors, on the issues affecting you.
By signing up you agree to our
privacy policy
.
Telecom Reg’s Best Kept On the Books
When Connecticut land-use commissions update their regulations, it seems like a no-brainer to jettison old telecommunications regulations adopted decades ago during a short-lived period when municipalities had authority to regulate second generation (2G) transmissions prior to the Connecticut Siting Council (CSC) being ordered by a state court in 2000 to regulate all cell tower infrastructure as “functionally equivalent” services.
It is far better to update those regs instead, especially for macro-towers given new technologies like small cells. Even though only ‘advisory’ to the CSC, the preferences of towns by law must be taken into consideration in CSC decision making. Detailed telecom regs – not just a general wish list -- are evidence that a town has put considerable thought into where they prefer such infrastructure be sited without prohibiting service that many – though not all – citizens want and that first responders rely on for public safety.
Such regs come in handy when egregious tower sites are proposed in sensitive areas, typically on private land. The regs are a town’s first line of defense, especially when cross referenced to plans of conservation and development, P&Z regulations, and wetlands setbacks. They identify how/where the town plans to intersect with the CSC process. They are also a roadmap for service providers regarding preferred sites and sometimes less neighborhood contention. In fact, to have no telecom regs can weaken a town’s rights to protect environmental, scenic, and historic assets, and serve up whole neighborhoods to unnecessary overlapping coverage and corporate overreach. Such regs are unique to every town and should not follow anyone else’s boiler plate, especially industry’s.
Connecticut is the only state that has a centralized siting entity for cell towers. The good news is that applicants must prove need for new tower sites in an evidentiary proceeding and any decisions have the weight of the state behind them. The bad news is that the CSC used to be far less industry-friendly and rote in their reviews, which now resemble a check list. There is an operative assumption at CSC that if an applicant wants a tower, they must need it, otherwise why spend significant money to run the approval gauntlet? This reflects a subtle shift over the years at CSC from sincere willingness to protect the environment toward minimal tweaking of bad applications with minor changes. The bottom line is that towns really cannot rely on the CSC to do all the work for them.
What CSC issues telecom providers is a “certificate of environmental compatibility” after an evidentiary proceeding (not unlike a court case) with intervenors, parties, expert witnesses, and the service provider’s technical pro’s sworn in and subject to cross examination. Service providers get to do the same with any opposition from intervenor/party participants – like towns and citizens -- and their experts. It’s an impressive process whose ultimate goal is the fine balancing between allowing adequate/reliable public services and protecting state ecology with minimal damage to scenic, historic, and recreational values. They unfortunately often fall short of their mandate – like approving cell towers with diesel generators over town aquifers -- evidenced by CSC only rejecting about five cell towers in the past 15-20 years.
The CSC was founded in 1972 and clarified its mission in the 1980’s to prevent the state from being carved up willy-nilly by gas pipelines, high tension corridors, and broadcast towers. With the sudden proliferation of cell towers beginning in late 1990’s, it became the most sued agency in Connecticut by both an arrogant upstart industry if applications were denied and by towns/citizens when bad sites were forced on them. CSC gradually formed a defensive posture that drives their decisions toward industry with deeper pockets and attorneys on retainer.
For citizens, nothing can wreck one’s day like the CSC. It behooves towns to protect what little toolkit they have, and understand the legal parameters of the CSC’s playing field. The CSC is not a “normal” government agency where municipal/citizen redress is based on logic and local support. Their process is largely immune to everything but specific kinds of evidence – like town regs with setbacks/fall zones, radio frequency transmission signal strengths, sensitive areas identified, and detailed wildlife inventory, among others.
There is a current cell tower fight involving two intervening towns -- Washington and Warren; both with good cell tower regs – over a tower site within 1200’ of a Montessori School, near Steep Rock’s nature preserves with comprehensive geology/wildlife databases that include endangered, threatened and special concern flora and fauna, on established federal/state migratory bird flyways, within throwing distance to a historic site capable of being listed on the Underground Railroad, and with an access road on a blind curve entering a state highway that will permanently damage wetlands, vernal pools, and core forests. There are well credentialed environmental experts, including Dr. Michael Klemens, former chair of Salisbury’s P&Z, as well as the former director of migratory bird management at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and an RF engineer testifying to alternative approaches, plus three attorneys representing intervenors. It is the most professional challenge I have seen at CSC since Falls Village successfully mounted one that protected Robbins Swamps several years ago.
The hearing is ongoing, with uncertain results. To see what it takes today to stop an inappropriate tower siting, see Docket #543 under “Pending Matters” at https://portal.ct.gov/csc before removing local cell tower regs – the lowest hanging fruit that any town can possess in case it’s needed.
B, Blake Levitt is the Communications Director at The Berkshire-Litchfield Environmental Council. She writes about how technology affects biology.