The FCC is supposed to prevent environmental harm from communications technology but often ignores its mandate

Ilustration by Klaus Kremmerz, ProPublica

Beyond regulating television and radio communications, The Federal Communications Commission has an often forgotten mandate, "to ensure that technology doesn't damage the environment," reports Peter Elkind of ProPublica. "When companies want to add new cell phone towers, build on protected land or launch satellites, the agency typically does little or nothing. . . . The agency's ecological role originated in the National Environmental Policy Act. The law requires federal agencies to assess whether projects they've authorized will cause harm."

The FCC "allows companies to decide for themselves whether their projects require environmental study. . . . . And if the companies break the rules, they're expected to report their own transgression. Few do." Elkind writes. The lax approach has had harmful and potentially disastrous outcomes. For instance, "A 120-foot cellphone tower intended for use by AT&T and T-Mobile [was built]. . . .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 Silicon Valley, a space startup pursued plans to equip thousands of satellites to use mercury fuel in orbit."

The FCC has real-time effects on humans and wildlife, Elkind writes: "As it presides over a nationwide buildout for 5G service, which will require 800,000 new 'small cell' transmitters, those perched on street poles and rooftops, often near schools, apartments and homes. But even with this massive effort underway, as ProPublica previously reported, the FCC has refused to revise its radiation-exposure limits, which date back to the era of flip phones. In addition, the agency has cut back on the environmental reviews that it requires while also restricting local governments' control over wireless sites."

In areas where infrastructure projects have started or are planned, residents have pushed back, but considering the FCC's history, it's an uphill battle, Elkind reports: "Hundreds of conflicts have erupted across the country, triggered by citizens fearing risks to their health from wireless radiation, harm to their property values, damage to the environment and the destruction of treasured views. . . . Environmentalists are routinely infuriated by the FCC's stance. . . . In 2014, the FCC hired its first full-time environmental lawyer, Erica Rosenberg. Her mission was an afterthought at the agency." She told Elkind, "Everybody was set on deployment. These environmental laws just got in the way. . . . It was just the culture of the place. Nobody cared." She quit in 2021.