June 24, 2009

(McClatchy-Tribune Information Services) -- When Lila Kleinman left St. Francis Hospital with a pacemaker last year, she was given a list of precautions. High on the list: Don't come into contact with, or be near, a "radio transmittal tower."

So when NextG Networks of California installed its wireless antenna system on a utility pole outside Kleinman's Holland Way home in Merrick two weeks ago, she was frightened.

So was her husband, Max, a World War II Navy veteran who has an implanted cardiac defibrillator.

Now the couple -- she's 80 and he's 81 -- can stop worrying. The wireless equipment is coming down.

After Hempstead Town attorneys met with NextG officials Tuesday, company representatives agreed to move the Distributed Antenna System to another location.

They also reached an informal agreement to move some other equipment recently installed on rights of way in front of nearly two dozen homes.

NextG is in contract with MetroPCS, a wireless carrier, to enhance its coverage at 275 sites in Nassau County, 169 of them in Hempstead. Most of those involve equipment being attached to existing Verizon poles but 35 new poles -- 24 in the town -- must be installed, company officials said.

State and federal law support NextG's installations on public rights of way. The state Public Service Commission deemed NextG a public utility, and the Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 prohibits municipalities from discriminating by restricting one public utility and not another.

And lawyers for both sides say federal law prevents municipalities from raising health concerns as a reason not to install the equipment.

Robert L. Delsman, a NextG vice president, said the agreement to move the equipment was done "purely in a spirit of cooperation with the town and did not relate to the residents' pacemakers. . . . NextG does not believe the residents would have suffered any adverse effects from the existing location unless they were to climb the pole and come into direct contact with the unit."

Some nearby residents had made dozens of phone calls and met with representatives of NextG and the town. Tuesday, Town Supervisor Kate Murray went to the neighborhood to deliver the good news.

"Even though we don't have the authority [to relocate the installations], we twisted arms and they agreed to move [some of] them," she said. "We're working to move more."