"The agency is mandated to safeguard the environment from damage caused by communication infrastructure. But when companies want to add new cell phone towers, build on protected land or launch satellites, the agency typically does little or nothing."
"In a mountainous forest in southwest Puerto Rico, workers cleared a patch to make room for a 120-foot cellphone tower intended for use by AT&T and T-Mobile. The site, as the tower company later acknowledged, destroyed some of the nesting habitat of the Puerto Rican nightjar, a tiny endangered songbird. Fewer than 2,000 are believed to be alive today.
In the northwestern New Mexico desert, a company called Sacred Wind Communications, promising to bring broadband to remote Navajo communities, planted a cell tower near the legally protected Pictured Cliffs archaeological site, which contains thousands of centuries-old tribal rock carvings.
And in Silicon Valley, a space startup pursued plans to equip thousands of satellites to use mercury fuel in orbit, even as an Air Force official at one of the possible launch sites voiced “extreme concern” that the toxic element could rain back down to earth.
You may be surprised to learn that these potential harms fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission. Few people think of the FCC as an environmental cop. It’s known for regulating television and radio and overseeing the deployment of communications technology. But the agency also has a broad mandate to ensure that technology doesn’t damage the environment. The task includes everything from protecting wildlife and human health to preserving historic sites and even preventing aesthetic blight."
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