BC town votes to ban cell phones

by cynthia yoo | March 16, 2008 at 02:54 pm | 782 views | 3 comments

An article from the Tyee describes how a small BC town bucked the mobile trend.

Looking for a nice quiet place to get away and unwind? The Village of New Denver in eastern British Columbia wants to make an unusual sales pitch:

Come, stay, and never hear the ring of a cell phone.

New Denver's citizens voted against the introduction of mobile phone service in a referendum in January. The vote was a close one -- 117 to 110 -- but the village council said before the referendum that it would live by the result. And it wants Telus to do the same.

New Denver (population about 600) is located in the Slocan Valley north of Nelson.

The issue has been passionately debated in the streets of New Denver and in the pages of the bi-weekly Valley Voice over the past few months. There are three reasons for the opposition: some citizens say radiation emitted by cellphone technology is a health hazard; others want to market the area to tourists and new residents as a tranquil cell-free sanctuary; and still others are just angry at Telus for what they see as its unwillingness to follow the community's wishes.

Flag this story

Upload

Make your good story a great story. Click here to add your photos & video to this story.

Crowd Power

Scan the web to add photos and videos to this story or add them from the NowPublic Archive.

Wellstone

at 18:42 on March 16th, 2008

http://flickr.com/photos/all_in_perspective/2338377984/

Wellstone has contributed a photo to this story.

Tomitheos

at 19:25 on March 16th, 2008

thanks for the info!

the JoshMeister

at 23:38 on March 16th, 2008

Regarding the alleged "health hazard," the U.S. FDA said in July 2003 that there wasn't conclusive evidence that cell phones cause any harm (and more recent reports from 2006 on fda.gov indicate that this position hasn't changed). If the citizens of New Denver are concerned about health issues surrounding cellular phones, they should also ban microwave ovens, radios, TVs, computer monitors, and police radios, which all emit small amounts of raditation like cell phones do.