SATELLITE STATION GETS PERMIT OK.

Byline: Kermit Pattison Daily News Staff Writer

Turning aside objections from wealthy neighbors, Ventura County planners have decided to renew a permit for a massive G.E. Americom satellite communication station.

Ventura County Planning Director Keith Turner granted the communications company giant an extension to 2005 to operate its Earth Station of 19 large antennae. He said the satellite station has complied with use conditions since the county last approved a permit modification five years ago.

``What has really changed since 1991?'' said Turner. ``Maybe another house has been built. Does that make it incompatible? In my opinion, no.''

The decision comes as a blow to a group of neighbors who seek to uproot the satellite station, saying it poses a health threat and is no longer compatible with their neighborhood of 20-acre estates.

Roy Jeppson, president of the Solano Verde Ranches Homeowners Association, said neighbors voted Tuesday night to appeal the permit extension to the Ventura County Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors.

``It certainly reflects what we understood the position of staff to be all along,'' Jeppson said. ``We don't consider it to be a major setback. . . . Our position has always been that what we're looking for is a review of this and a decision by the Board of Supervisors.''

Jeppson said the homeowners are still trying to reach some kind of settlement with G.E. Americom.

``There are a lot of homeowners that are adamant in wanting G.E. out,'' he said. ``But who knows? If we came in with some alternative, it might be acceptable.''

G.E. Americom insists the antennae emit power levels far below Federal Communications Commission safety standards. And the company notes that the satellite station was in place long before residents carved out their estates.

In renewing the permit, Turner said he found no evidence to support neighbors' fears of health hazards from microwave radiation. But county planners did impose a few additional conditions requiring the Earth Station to plant more landscaping to conceal antennae, pay 15 percent of the maintenance cost of the neighborhood's private roads and look for ways to reduce glare from night lights.

``All these things are tinkering and tweaking with the existing conditions,'' said Turner.

Phil Otero, vice president and general counsel at G.E. Americom office in Princeton, New Jersey, did not return phone calls Wednesday.

RCA Global Communications built the station more than two decades ago in what was then an uninhabited canyon beside South Mountain, five miles west of Moorpark. The county gave the station its first permit in 1974 to erect three 30-foot dish antennae a 300-foot microwave tower and 7,000-square-foot control building.

Over the next two decades, the station grew into a complex of 18 satellite dishes - some 70 feet in diameter - an 11,000-square-foot building and 300-foot microwave tower. In the meantime, the county approved several modifications to the permit and G.E. Americom took over the station.

One of two such sites in the United States, the Earth Station beams signals to a fleet of 13 G.E. satellites and other space platforms owned by other companies. It serves all the major television and radio networks, including ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and more than 11,000 cable systems.

Other customers include the Army, Navy, Air Force, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The station even forms part of the communication link to the White House, according to permit documents filed by G.E Americom.