St. Thomas Of Medina Meets The Info Highway

DOUBTS about the microwave towers at St. Thomas Episcopal Church would be hardly a ripple in the calm pond that is Medina if it weren't for Emma Vruwink.

How a simple notice in a church newsletter, a grudge that goes back several years and the sweeping federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 all fit into a dilemma facing one of the prettiest little towns in America is a story worth telling.

Mrs. Vruwink is the widow of the Rev. John Vruwink, who many people felt was the best rector St. Thomas had in recent memory. So many members agreed, that a hundred or so walked out of the congregation when the new rector, the Rev. M. Fletcher Davis, rubbed them the wrong way. It's no secret in Medina that John Vruwink's widow, Emma, now 80 and with plenty of steam, has little use for Davis.

So, one day Mrs. Vruwink is reading the church bulletin and she sees a little item that St. Thomas will allow microwave towers around its parking lot. At St. Thomas, they are really 35-foot masts used for cellular-phone coverage. Masts and larger towers are going up everywhere on the Eastside. For some landowners, it means steady income from a lease, especially if the owner is St. Thomas, now somewhat strapped.

"Like all nonprofit institutions, we could use the money," said Fred Hayes, a member of the vestry. "But we've delayed our negotiations until we get all the concerns aired from parents and members. It's a shame when this divides the community."

Medina's St. Thomas was one of about a half-dozen Episcopal churches partially relieved of its annual assessment to the Diocese of Olympia. Potential tower revenues - in some locations it's $10,000 per tower a year - would be welcome. But the St. Thomas parking lot is right where the kids in the church school play and where parents pick them up and drop them off. When she read that, Mrs. Vruwink started blowing the whistle.

Soon, parents and church members were meeting to ask what damage the towers can cause. The question is about EMF - electromagnetic field - and whether waves emanating from the antennas are harmful to those with repeated exposure. Most scientists say there is no evidence of any effects from the radiating towers. Try telling that to parents whose children will be playing under one every day.

The irony for Medina, Clyde Hill and Mercer Island is that these are the towns with the heaviest use of cellular phones. A two-year dispute at Yeshiva High School off Island Crest Way on Mercer Island resulted in AT&T shifting its sites to city property. That's one solution, but it still begs the question that the towers have to go somewhere.

In Medina, a petition from residents will be presented to the city that towers be a minimum 500 feet from residential property lines, increased from the current ordinance of a distance equal to the height of the tower plus antenna. Finding a good site for the towers is not easy for the telephone companies. AT&T alone has 200 towers in Washington state, with more coming. Add to that all the other companies looking to the future blend of cable, PCs and fully portable communications.

The result is small fights over tower placement going on all over the region. On Bainbridge Island, one woman has fought off a Sprint tower for over three years. Most of the battles come from a disbelief - or better yet a distrust - that the towers are harmless. That's where the Telecomm Act of 1996 comes in.

In its hundreds of pages, the sweeping reform of the communications industry said the FCC is the authority over electromagnetic fields, preempting local governments. Lobbying from municipalities softened that but kept acceptable levels of the fields to an international, not a local standard. It's almost impossible for a city to forbid the equipment over fear of electromagnetics.

The phone companies also say that distance doesn't mean much. Having a tower 50 or 500 feet away says nothing compared to the power of the transmitter. They also know an immutable law of neighborhoods: Put the darn thing somewhere else.

For the 3,000 souls of Medina, the information superhighway is not an imaginary thing. Its reality is towers and masts sprouting like rhodies; its metaphor is Evergreen Point Road, burdened by trucks because it leads to Bill Gates' 57,000-square-foot, $30 million compound eternally under construction near the tiny town center.

Old-time Medina residents call Microsoft executives the Chateau Loire crowd for the size and ambition of their mansions. That's among the more polite terms. The information age is coming to Medina, not to the sound of cooings on the channel button but with road crews.

Yet, if people are going to stroll the aisles of Larry's with a palm-sized cellular calling home for a double-check on dinner, the supporting technology has to go somewhere.

That argument cuts no ice with Emma Vruwink and the other, highly informed, energetic opponents. To Mrs. Vruwink, St. Thomas needs money because it has taken a wayward path. Her letter to The Times is printed today. In it is a plea for a different age when her church was still St. Thomas and not St. Thomas-On-The-Verge.

And all this time, you thought nothing ever happened in Medina.

James Vesely's column focusing on Eastside issues appears Mondays on editorial pages of The Times.