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‘Unbelievable’ interference

Former mayor of Ferndale tells of havoc wreaked by radio towers in Washington
goldsmith
Yvonne Goldsmith speaks at a town hall forum Tuesday in Tsawwassen.

The former mayor of Ferndale painted a disconcerting picture of living in the shadow of radio towers during a visit to Tsawwassen Tuesday evening.

“It was unbelievable what we had to put up with, with the interference from the radio towers,” said Yvonne Goldsmith, who addressed a town hall meeting hosted by the Cross Border Coalition to Stop the Radio Towers.

Goldsmith said her husband has a home-based business and while talking on the phone people would ask him to turn down the radio.

“He’d say, ‘It’s not the radio, it’s the interference from the radio station here.’ It would interfere with the fax machine, the phone lines. We had eight telephones in our home. And they all picked up the signal.”

Goldsmith, who is now a planning commissioner in Ferndale, said she was at the meeting at Tsawwassen United Church as a private citizen and wasn’t representing the Washington state city.
She said interference from the towers was everywhere, including at the church about three or four blocks from her home.

“In the middle of singing, or the pastor’s sermon, it would come across. Every once in a while you’d see someone going, ‘Is that you God?’ It was not God.”

The coalition is fighting a plan to install radio towers in Point Roberts near the Tsawwassen border for fear the blanketing interference will wreak havoc with household electronics here. BBC Broadcasting Inc. wants to erect five 45-metre steel towers on an undeveloped lot on McKenzie Way to broadcast a South Asian station to a Lower Mainland audience.

The station had been broadcasting from towers in Ferndale but Goldsmith said they rarely hear interference anymore and there’s nothing going on in that area.

Coalition member Arthur Reber, who provided the crowd with an update on the legal fight, said the radio station is still on the air but nobody knows where it’s broadcasting from.

It’s not coming from Ferndale, he said.

“We visited. The studio is empty.”

Whatcom County’s hearing examiner rejected the application to erect the towers last fall, ruling they exceeded height limits in the American peninsula. That decision was upheld by Whatcom County council in January and is now being challenged in court.

The coalition will be holding an art and travel auction fundraiser to help pay for the ongoing legal fight on Sunday, June 7 at Harris Barn in Ladner.

The coalition is looking for volunteers. Those interested can contact bethgunderson@gmail.com.