The res­i­dents of Mend­ham Town­ship are upset! Their lawyers can’t stop Ver­i­zon from erect­ing a giant steel cell tower in their idyl­lic New Jer­sey neigh­bor­hood. Con­tin­ues the New York Times:

Their los­ing bat­tle is becom­ing com­mon­place as hun­dreds of com­mu­ni­ties around the coun­try wage the same fight against cell­phone com­pa­nies and the march of spindly, metal­lic and freak­ishly tall anten­nas into quiet, afflu­ent precincts of suburbia.

But wait—there’s more!

Of course, even the resisters depend on cell­phone ser­vice. “No one can drive down to the cor­ner to buy milk with­out call­ing five peo­ple,” said Nancy Moor­thy, who lives in Bed­min­ster, N.J., not far from Mend­ham Town­ship, and has been fight­ing the instal­la­tion of a cell tower near her home for nearly 10 years.

Yes, that’s right: she dri­ves to the cor­ner store. (And kudos to the writer for begin­ning the para­graph with “of course.” A lit­tle ironic bias can go a long way in a jour­nal­is­tic career.)

A fed­eral law pre­vents com­mu­ni­ties from reject­ing tower sit­ings on the basis of health con­cerns, because the RF field is only lethal within a few feet. Pub­lic resis­tance focuses mostly on aes­thetic con­cerns. Regret­tably, no atten­tion is paid to the most seri­ous out­stand­ing issue with cel­lu­lar tow­ers, which is that they’re incred­i­bly fatal to birds.

So remem­ber, kids: every time your cell phone rings, another lit­tle song­bird sev­ers its wings.