A local business owner urged the Solvang City Council to place a moratorium on telecommunications companies during its Oct. 26 meeting, due to concerns associated with 5G cell towers.
Michael Mendizza, a writer and owner of Zfolio and Solvang Olive Press, spoke to the council for more than 30 minutes during an agendized “informational discussion” on 5G technology. His presentation conflicted with information from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and included his opinion and research on potential health and surveillance issues that come with 5G. Those concerns include an increased risk of cancer due to “multiple types of radio-frequency radiation” and the likelihood of “mandatory surveillance” via implanted chips made possible by 5G.
“The idea is they want your brain to be connected to the web,” he said. “That’s the essential image of what’s being proposed. … Masks serve no function to reduce infection. Mandatory masks are a prelude to mandatory vaccines, mandatory RF chipping, mandatory surveillance passports, and tracking, and 5G, again, being the piece of the puzzle that makes that happen.”
City Council candidate Chris Bowyer spoke against the presentation during public comment, stating that he received an email from Mendizza that was “rife with disinformation, mistakes, and outright lies.”
Bowyer, a contract security adviser and consultant, said he’s advocated for a long time that people in leadership need to listen to the experts. He told the council that he would be addressing them as someone who has consulted “numerous times on the topic of information security and concerted disinformation campaigns.”
“In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, it was a fear of high voltage power lines. In the ’90s and beyond it was the advent of cellular technology, and now we have the latest iteration of this fear that is 5G is going to cook us like we’re in a microwave or it’s going to enable universal tracking,” Bowyer said. “What you were presented with is meant to galvanize our community into coming here with an outlandish conspiracy theory that has no scientific basis.”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), no adverse health effect has been causally linked with exposure to wireless technologies.
The Food and Drug Administration states that while the specifics of 5G remain ill-defined, it is known that 5G cellphones will use frequencies covered by current FCC exposure guidelines and the conclusions reached based on the current body of scientific evidence covers these frequencies.
“The claim that 5G technology is going to be used to monitor and control by tiny biometric computer chips in our body through the proposed towers, connecting to thousands of low-Earth orbit satellites. I can’t believe those words just came out of my mouth,” Bowyer said.
Mayor Pro Tem Robert Clarke said he used to believe the technology was “all about faster cellphone service and faster Wi-Fi,” but then he started doing his own homework and changed his mind.
“The gentleman who just called [Bowyer] reminds me of a person who is really into trusting your master because that’s what some of the things that I’ve learned about this has been,” he said.
Councilmember Daniel Johnson said he sided with Clarke in wanting to slow down the process of potential 5G towers in the area because “we have not shown any data at all to counter what we’ve been presented as far as health and surveillance overreach.” According to a city staff report, Verizon has one 5G test site in the city with no plans to install any additional 5G technology in the city.
The council agreed to possibly conduct a community workshop where both sides on the issue can present their research. Mayor Ryan Toussaint said he was unsure about what, if any, power the city had to regulate the technology, but he said he did want the Branding and Design Committee to come up with design guidelines for potential 5G towers. And the rest of the council agreed.
This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2020.