The municipality of Woluwe-Saint-Lambert has filed several appeals against recent environmental permits issued by the Bruxelles Environnement. And they approved the operation of the transmitting antennas in different locations in the municipality. This relates to a total of 42 transmitter antennas for Proximus and Orange at Ariane and rue Floralies.
“The municipality learned that these permits were issued after their occurrence“Delphine de Falkenere, the local councilor in charge of environmental permits,” explains.Our role in this context is to verify that the law of electric waves and fields is respected. Here, we found in three decisions that there were violations and contradictions in the procedure. So we filed an appeal with the School of Ecology“.
File investigation errors
Before issuing an environmental permit allowing the operation of GSM antennas, Bruxelles Environnement, the regulatory body competent in these matters, is required to conduct a risk assessment for each project. The establishment should also evaluate and perform simulations to verify whether the specified standard for electric field is being met in all places accessible to the public in the designated area around the antennas. The compatibility of simulation models must also be checked in the field, that is, they correspond to reality.
“These models incorrectly presented pitched roofs as facadesDelphine De Valkeneer identifies.Bruxelles Environnement applied to these sloping surfaces is an attenuation factor of 6 dB while the regulation states in principle that this is a factor of 4 dB.“.
Technically, the file was not acceptable. The Faculty of Environment decided to punish and revoke the permits. “We regret that there is no longer a public investigation into the plans for installing GSM antennas and that we no longer seek advice from municipalities. So when issuing passes, we make sure that the procedure is completely followed.“, Concludes a member of the local council.
However, operators can organize help files for these permits to allow the installed antennas to operate.
