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REAL LIFE NEWS: POLICE RADIOS ARE DESTROYING TREES

by Hazed

Technology gets blamed for all kinds of bad things - mobile phones give you brain tumors, power lines give you leukemia, and now police radios are accused of killing trees. But actually, this latest techno-scare is actually true. A new police radio system in Dallas is interfering with an automated sprinkler system 30 miles away, which means brown lawns and dead trees in Plano.

The sprinkler system cost $5 million and was set up 15 years ago to irrigate 1,200 acres of parkland and trees alongside roads. But a few months ago, officials noticed that trees were starting to die, so they investigated and eventually fingered the police radio system as the perp.

The cities of Cedar Hill, DeSoto and Duncanville have spent $1.3 million installing their new police radio system, which has enough range to mess up the sprinklers in Plano which is 30 miles away. The radios also interfere with water-tower monitoring equipment in Coppell.

Coppell has managed to sort things out by switching frequency at a cost of only $11,000, but Plano reckons that saving their dying trees will cost a lot mroe than that because there's 539 controllers scattered around the city. They estimate it'll cost around a quarter of a million. They admit they're going to have to change the system, but they want the three cities to suspend use of their new radio system until January, so they have a chance to upgrade.

But the police are not cooperating. The Southwest Regional Communications Center, responsible for emergency response in the three cities, is adamant that the radio system must be fully online by November, even if the price is some dead trees.

Plano has taken its case to the FCC, who regulate the radiowaves in the US, accusing the cops of spectrum infringement. We'll have to wait and see what the FCC do about this!

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