By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.

Residents of Malibu, California, with the help of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), are stepping up their fight to stop the city from allowing T-Mobile and wireless developer Crown Castle to install 5G infrastructure within feet of their homes and property lines.

“We want decisions that affect our homes, our health and our environment to be made openly, lawfully and with real public input — not rushed through behind the scenes or shaped by corporate pressure,” Malibu For Safe Tech Executive Director Lonnie Gordon told The Defender.

Gordon and her organization have been working with 12 Malibu residents who appealed the city’s decision to approve the 5G small cells, or wireless transmitters.

In a motion filed Tuesday with the Malibu hearing officer, the residents alleged that city staff “rigged” the appeal process.

The current appeal process is “unfair and designed to result in slanted proceedings that deny Appellants a fair hearing,” according to the motion.

For instance, the city’s procedure prohibits the public from participating. “The public must be allowed to attend, and public comment should be allowed,” the motion states.

The residents asked the hearing officer to adopt a new appeal procedure and timeline to ensure that residents’ concerns are taken seriously.

Gordon said:

“What concerns us most is that these 5G small cells are being placed extremely close to people’s homes and they’re being installed in clusters, not as single poles. That means overlapping [radiofrequency] emissions in the places where families live, sleep and spend most of their time.”

CHD is assisting the residents through its Stop 5G initiative.

Miriam Eckenfels, director of CHD’s Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) & Wireless Program, said that the residents’ “tenacious efforts underscore the importance of community activism and coordination.”

The motion also asked the hearing officer to consolidate the residents’ appeal cases to allow for efficient handling of their concerns.

The hearing officer is expected to respond by April 16, according to W. Scott McCollough, CHD’s chief EMR & Wireless litigator and one of the lawyers representing the residents in their appeal cases.

McCollough said:

“These cases are about whether residential neighborhoods will have any meaningful voice in important decisions regarding placement of intrusive and potentially dangerous infrastructure near homes and sensitive environmental areas.”

Some of the residents have EMR Syndrome, meaning they experience negative health symptoms when exposed to wireless radiation, Gordon said. The 5G small cells T-Mobile and Crown Castle want to install would dramatically increase residents’ exposure.

It’s not just people who face adverse impacts, Gordon added. “Birds, pollinators, trees and plants located near these sites are affected too.”

People’s lives and millions of dollars at stake due to telecom fire risk

The residents’ motion is the latest in a legal battle that has been going on for years.

“Many of the appeal cases have been pending for more than four years because the wireless companies would not provide essential electrical and fire safety-related information required by Malibu’s wireless rules,” McCollough said.

The city should have required the companies to provide documentation that their 5G equipment was safely designed to mitigate fire risks, McCollough said.

But the city didn’t do that. Instead, city officials in 2025 “struck a secret deal” with the wireless companies that allowed the appeals cases to go forward, even though the companies hadn’t shown their designs were safe, he said.

Malibu has experienced many fires, including one last year that burned over 770 acres in three hours.

In 2018, telecom equipment sparked the Woolsey Fire in Malibu, which burned for over a month and destroyed almost 500 homes and resulting in $6 billion in damages.

That’s why it’s essential that telecommunications companies show their safety designs when they want to install new equipment, McCollough said.

“Lives are at stake, as are many millions of dollars in potential property damages from yet another devastating telecom-caused fire,” the motion states.

Residents hope to set a precedent

Gordon said she hopes the residents’ appeal efforts will set a precedent that will help residents in other towns fight the onslaught of 5G infrastructure. She said:

“Our hope is that by standing up now, we protect not only our own neighborhoods but also other communities facing the same pattern of aggressive, clustered small‑cell rollouts.

“We’re the ‘little guys’ in this fight. But we’re standing up because we believe communities deserve a voice, families deserve safety and people deserve transparency.”

Last month, scientists with the International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields published a report showing that existing safety limits for wireless radiation emitted by wireless devices such as cellphones, cell towers and 5G small cells are at least 200 times too high to protect people from cancer risk.

Current limits are also eight to 24 times too high to protect against male reproductive harm, including decreased sperm count, sperm vitality and testosterone levels, the scientists concluded.

Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which sets the U.S. safety limits, continues to defy a 2021 court order to produce a better explanation for how its current limits — which haven’t been updated since 1996 — adequately protect human health.

The court order directed the FCC to review 11,000 pages of evidence supporting claims that wireless radiation at levels currently allowed by the FCC harms people — especially kids — and the environment.

Instead of complying with the court order, the FCC proposed a rule change that, if adopted, would allow for the uncontrolled proliferation of new cell towers and 5G small cells.

Related articles in The Defender

• Malibu City Officials Accused of ‘Disturbing’ Deceit Over 5G Fire Safety Measures
• Children’s Health Defense, Los Angeles County Settle Lawsuit Over 5G Towers
• ‘Star Power’ Helps Malibu Residents in Battle Over 5G Small Cell Transmitters
• Wireless Radiation Limits at Least 200 Times Too High to Protect Against Cancer Risks
• Wireless Radiation Sickness Gets a New Name: ‘EMR Syndrome’

The post Malibu Residents Step Up Fight Against T-Mobile 5G Transmitters Near Homes appeared first on Children’s Health Defense.

 

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