The Communications Industry
and the Mono Basin

"Estimated percentage change since 1979 in the number of birds killed annually by U.S. Communications towers: +186"
--Harper's Index

ABANDONED COMMUNICATIONS INSTALLATION

So you work in communications, and you are glad that you aren't logging forests or mining hills away. Don't be so sure. There are enormous impacts from communications. Roads are built to mountaintops to build installations. Microwaves aren't so good for birds or hang gliders. Power lines, phone lines, and fiber optics are strung across the landscape--usually buried with a road alongside. Satellite launches are extremely resource depleting--look at all the energy, materials, and pollution it takes to launch the Space Shuttle (at least they are using hydrogen fuel--but how did they create the hydrogen?). Look at all the materials and energy it took to build your computer, not to mention producing silicon chips requires an enormous amount of water--and guess what part of the country produces the most silicon chips? (I'm guessing it's the dry part).

SPRING SIERRA FROM THE INSTALLATION
(note the Pumice Valley Landfill left of center)

I think it was during the winter of 1993 that I rode my motorcycle up Angeles Crest Hwy and watched the sunset from Mt. Wilson. Mt. Wilson is scary. It has a tremendous amount of transmitting equipment on top of it. I've heard that hang gliders have to be careful where they go, so they don't stay in microwave beams too long. While I was watching the gorgeous red sunset, I noticed things falling out of the sky and landing in the brush on the slope in front of me (no, they weren't hang gliders). Soon I realized they were birds! I couldn't believe the frequency--one every minute or so! I wrote a letter to the Forest Service expressing my concern and asking if any studies had been done on the microwaves' effects on birds, and I got a letter back asking me to call them. I wished they had answered the question in the letter, because I never got around to making that long-distance call.

CLOUDS AND MONO CRATERS

The installation shown on this page is in the Mono Craters. Occasionally you can see it reflecting sunlight in the late afternoon. The Mono Basin is still relatively remote, and therefore communications facilities aren't popping up everywhere. But elsewhere they are, and even forgetting the habitat fragmentation and resource use they cause, you still have to wonder what all those electromagnetic waves and beams and fields are doing to us and our environment. There are too many "unnatural" things to which we are subjecting our bodies. Could be doing some bad stuff.

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