The landscape along Interstate 94 between Madison, Wisconsin, and Chicago is changing. The typically barren farmland, now blanketed in snow, is spiked with 250-foot metal structures topped with blinking red lights.
Cell phone towers are a striking addition to the rural countryside as companies strike deals with farmers willing to lease portions of their land.
Take, for example, US Cellular, which built a 430-foot tower on Tom Shively's Shelbyville, Missouri, farm.
US Cellular paid him a one-time fee of US$7,500 for a 99-year lease. Shively used the money he collected to pay off a few debts. For the most part, he's pleased with the deal.
"I look at it as I lost an acre for $7,500," Shively said. In a lifetime, he couldn't expect to make that much from farming a single acre.
Going rates for tower placement range from $400 to $1,700 per month. Wired Magazine reported that a church leased its steeple for a one-time $500,000 fee.
In rural areas, towers are placed one every 16 or so miles, said Sprint PCS spokesman Jeff Chaltas. The number is growing at a rapid pace. In June 1996, there were 24,800 towers in the United States; in June 1999, the figure had jumped to 74,000.
"Sometimes the surrounding landowners will get a little jealous if their spot wasn't chosen," Chaltas said.
Shively uses a cell phone himself, as most farmers do.
But ironically, he can't get a signal on some parts of his farm. He's charged a roaming fee when he picks up signals from a tower that's not on his property.
"By and large, the people we work with are very pleased to use the technology," said Richard Ellinghuysen, the national secretary of the National Farmers Organization. "They want to have the same access that their city cousins do."
But a certain rural contingent has begun to speak out against the towers. Opponents say they're unattractive and they fear the health risks to people and animals.
The towers emit electromagnetic radiation, but so far, there is no scientific evidence that the low-frequency waves are harmful to humans. Research has focused on the cell phones themselves. Critics charge that the towers are potentially dangerous as well, but no organization is monitoring them to determine their health effects.
June Varner, an organic farmer in Little Falls, Minnesota, has been trying to stop the construction of a tower a quarter mile from her property.
In addition to personal health concerns, she's worried that the tower will alter the flight patterns of pesticide spray planes, re-routing them over her land and affecting her ability to farm organically.
Varner contends the tower was built out of greed rather than need. She said the company that built it anticipated that cell phone companies eventually would need it and would pay to use it.
"Nobody asked to have a tower here," Varner said. "This was purely profit-motivated."
Dean Virnig, the owner of Virnig Manufacturing in Pierz, Minnesota, is considering moving his business because of the 400-foot structure looming 1,000 feet away.
"We're under its shadows 24 hours a day," Virnig said. "If it's a health [hazard], you won't know until 20 years from now, and then you're dead."
Virnig and his neighbors tried to fight the tower, but the county commissioners approved it.
"I feel like we got a raw deal," Virnig said.
Others agree that the public should be better protected.
"Even though there is no evidence of imminent danger, you should have a safety net," said George Carlo, chairman of Wireless Technology Research. "No one's taking any responsibility here. There is nothing in place that is protecting the public."
The Federal Communications Commission is the one government agency that has the authority to regulate the structures. It has adopted the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements guidelines to determine the amount of radiation the towers are permitted to emit.
Cell phone companies say they comply with those guidelines.
But Norbert Hankin, an environmental scientist and radiation specialist for the Environmental Protection Agency, said the NCRPM guidelines consider only acute exposure, where the effects occur at the time of exposure or immediately after.
"They were not intended to address the situation that the public is most concerned about, and that is chronic exposure," Hankin said. "As a result, there's really uncertainty about how protective the current guidelines are."
"There's a big difference now [in] the exposure environment," Hankin said, now that cell phones and towers are ubiquitous. "All of these new systems have come into being in that time."
The EPA itself cannot study radio frequency radiation because it ran out of funding about seven years ago, Hankin said. He said the agency has to devote its money to regulating materials proven to cause health problems.
"Unless we have a program that provides us with funds, we can't really do anything," Hankin said.
One organization is trying to change the laws that regulate the towers.
Libby Kelley, the executive director of the Council on Wireless Technology Impacts, has brought a lawsuit against the FCC.
Because no research shows that the towers are harmful, the FCC does not allow municipalities to use that as a valid argument against towers, and Kelley thinks that is unfair.
In addition, CWTI charges that the FCC failed to adopt guidelines that protect public health, and therefore must work with health agencies to establish new ones.
The case is now awaiting a decision from the US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.
"Meanwhile, this buildout continues and people are getting exposed to potentially harmful radiation levels," Kelley said.