NEXRAD tower issue resurfaces
By Jesse Phelps

Part I of a two-part review of where we stand with the Sulphur Mountain weather tower

The National Academy of Sciences is undertaking a study on the NEXRAD flood warning tower on Sulphur Mountain Road, according to United States Senator Barbara Boxer of California. The study should help confirm whether the tower is adequately performing the function for which it's intended: early prediction of weather patterns and, particularly, warnings for flash floods in Ventura County and the Los Angeles Basin.

The tower, which appeared suddenly on the horizon atop Suphur Mountain during the four-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend of 1993, has been the target of questions and controversy for nearly a decade. Local residents have complained that the microwave pulse, emitted several times an hour by the tower, presents dangers to the health of those Upper Ojai residents living in close proximity.

In addition, the tower, which officials of the National Weather Service claimed would blend in with the natural landscape, sticks out like a bee-stung albino thumb upon the otherwise pristine mountaintop.

Many residents living in the area when the tower first appeared have now moved and, for a time, housing values in the area dropped considerably, according to nearby homeonwers. Others still living on Sulphur Mountain report high incidents of cancer and other maladies. Though they cannot be directly linked to the tower, these incidents have increased suspicion of the tower's viability as a harmless, indeed, helpful addition to the region.

The latest issue is whether the tower even does its job. "Concerns have been raised that the NEXRAD is not effective in providing sufficient warnings," said Boxer, in an April 7 letter to National Academy of Sciences president Bruce Alberts. "Although the General Accounting Office studied the performance of the Sulphur Mountain radar in 1998, concerns have been raised that the study contained conflicting evidence, and the conclusions did not always appear to match the data," Boxer wrote.

"As you conduct this study, I hope that you will specifically examine the warning failure rate and radar data gap."
Boxer's concerns were echoed by Sulphur Mountain resident Larry Hagman, who at one point offered to foot the bill (in excess of $3,000,000) to move the tower to a new location where it might perform better and with less potential danger to local residents.

"It's been missing between half and three-quarters (of the events)," said Hagman. "It's in the wrong position, and it has been the whole time. It doesn't pick up the storms under 6,000 feet, as it's designed to, because it's too high."

Hagman said that he continues to be embroiled in a battle with the weather service, which continues to deny any problems. "We finally got anough proof for Sen. Boxer to ask for mney to do a survey on it," he said. "And we got it, after six years."
Hagman aserted that, despite its claims that all is fine, the government put in a second Southern California tower to compensate for the lack of coverage.

"It was not working so well that the Weather Service asked for another doppler radar to be put down in Anaheim. That one is quite good and it covers the basin," he said.

Hagman, whose property sits no more than a half-mile from the radar tower, says the survey will receive funding of "up to a half-million dollars." He hopes it can be completed within about a six-month window.

In Wednesday's edition of the Ojai Valley News, we will explore specific data on the tower's efficiency and find out where residents are prepared to go from here, should the study find the tower to be effective.

© 2003 The Ojai Valley News

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