Status: 16.01.2024, 17:35 PM
By: Martin Schullerus
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The mobile phone antenna on the house at Maria-Eich-Straße 18 supplies residential areas west of the railway and the motorway in Gräfelfinger – and has long been a nuisance for the community. Now the building committee rejected another permit. © Dagmar Rutt
Communication between a mobile phone operator and the municipality of Gräfelfing has been disrupted for years. Now, a majority in the building committee has pulled the plug on a mobile phone antenna under building law – even at the risk of causing dead spots on the motorway, for example.
Gräfelfing – The municipality of Gräfelfing has been pursuing a rather special mobile communications concept for many years – with mixed success. It provides for a list of so-called positive locations, mainly on the outskirts of towns or in open areas, where tall radio towers are explicitly permitted. In return, the municipality excludes mobile phone antennas on buildings in residential areas. However, the migration of operators to the large sites is paralyzing. A prime example: the antenna operated by Deutsche Funkturm GmbH (DFMG) for Deutsche Telekom on the building at Maria-Eich-Straße 18. Their days are now numbered – once again.
More than ten years ago, the admissibility of this antenna was the subject of proceedings before the Supreme Administrative Court (VGH). A settlement in 2011 stipulated that an exemption would be granted until 31 December 2022 and that the plant would be tolerated until then. This isolated exemption was granted by the municipality in 2015. In the meantime, however, the mobile phone operator did not move: it neither dismantled the system and moved to the positive location at TSV Gräfelfing, nor did it realize the planned location near Josef-Schöfer-Straße. "Instead, on 23.11.2023, the DFMG again submitted an application for an isolated exemption to the municipality of Gräfelfing, limited to 30.06.2025," said Markus Ramsauer, head of the building authority, in the meeting document for the building committee with an audible undertone.
Nevertheless, the administration recommended that the request be granted. "This location plays a crucial role as it ensures comprehensive coverage in the western part of the town, especially along the motorway and in the southern residential area. The likely occurrence of dead spots would not only be disturbing, but could also be potentially dangerous, especially in terms of safety on the motorway," the administration warned. Since the joint use of the site at TSV "is to be realised in the near future" and the new location at Josef-Schöfer-Straße is to be implemented, it seems justified to grant the exemption for the last time for the transitional period of one and a half years.
Mayor Peter Köstler affirmed in the debate in the building committee: "This is an important location for supply, and if it disappears, we will have a problem." Not least with their own citizens, which Köstler did not say, however.
A majority of the committee was not enthusiastic about this tolerant and rational approach. On the contrary. Martin Feldner (Greens) said: "This is the system of mobile operators." It is not for nothing that the implementation of the Gräfelfinger mobile communications concept is progressing "terribly slowly". Feldner: "Deutsche Telekom doesn't move without pressure." He was strongly opposed to any further exemption and, moreover, to any settlements in court.
Anette Kitzmann-Waterloo (SPD) took a similar view, saying: "The mobile phone operator would have had eleven years to move to a new location due to the settlement and the temporary isolated exemption. We have created the opportunity for this."
Construction consultant Bertold Ziersch, who looks back on an unpleasant (albeit private) legal dispute with a mobile phone operator, said that damage to health caused by nearby mobile phone antennas "cannot be ruled out". When it comes to secure supply in motorway tunnels, for example, a mobile antenna can provide a temporary remedy. Ziersch: "The municipality should not take any more steps towards the operator."
The panel rejected the isolated exemption for another year and a half by a vote of 6-4. Mayor Köstler, Florian Ernstberger (BVGL), Ochmaa Göbel and Marion Appelmann (both CSU) voted against this decision.