RAP for Richmond - Responsible Antenna Placement & Planning
Keeping Our Homes and Schools Safe and Protecting Property Values

Information & Research
Official Documents
 
  • Richmond's Zoning Ordinance describes what uses each zone of the City is intended for. The wireless ordinance is intended to prevent wireless antenna installations from being placed in Residential zones.
  • The General Plan Ridgeline Map shows the ridgeline (dark curvy line on the left running SE to NW) on which no wireless antenna installations are supposed to be placed.
  • This is the text of Richmond's Wireless Ordinance which is supposed to control how and where wireless antenna installations are allowed and built. The Annotated Wireless Ordinance is the same document with notes and comments as relate to the 260 Water Street project.
  • This is the T-Mobile Design which was submitted and approved as referenced in the Design Approval and Exemption from Conditional Use Permit requirement. This design violates numerous sections of the Wireless ordinance, but was exempted from having to comply with any except the one requiring camouflage so that no one on a public right of way could tell what it was. Granting this exemption meant that this project would be done secretly, out of view of the Planning Commission and the public at large.
  • This May 14th Letter to Lina Velasco, Senior Planner analyzed the Wireless ordinance in detail and requested that the 260 Water Street project be stopped until it had at least gone through the Conditional Use Permit process, which would allow the public to comment and the Planning Commission representing the public to review the project.
  • During 2006 Richmond's Planning and Building Departments went through a detailed study of their performance and processes, by Zucker Systems, resulting in this Report and its Appendix.  Among the  observations made was that "rules and procedures are often not followed and there is inadequate respect for the General Plan" with the recommendation that that "The City should stick with the process and make it transparent."
  • One document that should be available, but is not, is a map or list of all the commercial wireless installations existing and in the process of being approved or built. Without this, there is no means to assess whether these antenna installations are operating according to FCC Safety Guidelines.


 


Health Hazards

Radio Frequency

Radiation Radio frequency (RF) radiation is defined as the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum ranging from 10 kilohertz (10,000 cycles per second) to 300 gigahertz (300 billion cycles per second). AM and FM radio, broadcast television, cellular phones and WiFi are all examples of technologies that utilize RF radiation. Cellular networks in the United States typically operate in the 800 mega-hertz (800 million cycles per second) or 1,900 megahertz range, whereas WiFi most commonly operates at 2.45 gigahertz. As the articles collected discuss, health and environmental concerns are raised both by the power level or intensity of RF radiation emissions, as well as by the characteristics of the signal itself (e.g., its frequency, modulations, and pulses).

Court Rulings:
Literature:
Links:

General information on Radiofrequency (RF) radiation, and what people around the world are doing to resist its proliferation


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