Smart Meters, an arresting story
Part 2 of a series to be continued ... By Peter Menkin

Part 1 | Part 2

In a series of four interviews lasting more than thirty minutes each by phone with Joshua Hart in his home located outside Portola, California, a nearly remote location, Peter Menkin talked with the activist about Smart Meters and their installation by utility companies in various parts of the United States. Peter Menkin’s conversations were held over four separate Mondays and on other days in their short durations themselves, ending in this article-interview where talking from his home office in Mill Valley, California north of San Francisco Peter Menkin offered this series of five questions. The questions were submitted to Joshua Hart in writing prior to the interview.

Joshua Hart is an anti-Smart Meter activist who has been published widely on the subject of Smart Meters, including in The Wall Street Journal. He is deeply concerned with the microwave radiation the meters and their grid emit and believes they cause health problems. These health problems include cancer. The Smart Meter is an environmental hazard in Joshua Hart’s opinion and he says they cause people’s “…health to collapse.” “His organization is one of hundreds across the nation and world.

You can hear what he says in this radio interview about fighting against the installation of these Smart Meters,” in a radio interview ( http://youtu.be/1nWZxKsNccM ) on “Checkin’ it Out with Dr. James Tracy.”

“The Wall Street Journal” reports, Should Consumers Participate In Their Utility’s Smart-Meter Program (April 14, 2013):

More than 37 million smart meters have been installed on homes and businesses in the U.S. so far, government data show. And according to IEE, an institute of the Edison Foundation, 20 utilities in 16 states are at or near full deployment of smart meters in their service territories.

The industry says wireless meters are a critical part of an effort to improve and modernize the electrical grid, a goal backed by the federal government. About $4.5 billion was set aside in the 2009 stimulus to improve the nation's power grid, and utilities have tapped some of those funds to speed the rollout of smart-meter programs.

Q: What is a Smart Meter and what are they about? Reports from various sources say that they began with Obama money. The Wall Street Journal cites a government number that exceeds $4 billion in one of their stories. Can you tell us something about how this Smart Meter business came to be, and where the impetus began? Give us a thumb nail look at its history.

The Smart Meter is an electronic and often wireless digital utility meter. And these have been installed in their millions in the United States and abroad. And you’re right, they started with Obama money in 2008; the Stimulus Act set aside [as much as] $11 billion -- the Department of Energy. So there was a huge amount of stimulus money on the table and there were a number of Smart Meter firms poised to jump on this money. Many of the meters were not ready for deployment, yet the companies rushed them to market anyway.

In terms of the process of how they came to be, the point of them was really to increase and maximize profits for utility companies. The stated environmental benefits are false. The utility industry claimed that the Smart Meters would reduce energy consumption. But there is no independent study or evidence to back that up. The studies that have been done have shown that there are no energy savings and even energy increases. The meters seem to have been and especially the AMI meters have been designed for government agencies, police and law enforcement and the National Security Agency to use the data to create a profile on people. The main problems with the Smart Meter are health issues, privacy, and fire hazard, and overcharging. In California, you have the Public Utilities Commission, which is supposed to regulate the utility companies and follow the safety codes. The CPUC have been cheerleaders for the Smart Meter program.

There are 50 million Smart Meters installed in the United States. And wherever they are installed, there are problems reported. Wherever they are installed, there is political organization against them. This organizing against them is growing. I work with organizations and individuals around the world to educate the public to defend and preserve their rights against utility companies with respect to Smart Meters. I think the whole Smart Meter plan was essentially a manufactured demand by utility companies that began before Obama was elected.

Q: Let’s talk about the area of public interest right of way vs private property rights. Many people say that the various counties in which they live offer laws that say they don’t have to have a Smart Meter installed, and when they say “No” to their installation, they are installed anyway. What does this say to the issue of public interest right of way, as exercised by utility companies in their installation of Smart Meters? Do you believe that besides this thin issue of legal protection, and its enforcement, that there is a genuine public interest in installing Smart Meters? Explain something of what you think Public Interest activity means for citizenry in general, as a rule of Democracy.

Note that Joshua Hart lives outside of Portola, California with his wife. Our phone conversations took place over a series of days, usually a Monday, and he continued to express his opinion in each conversation, lacing the dialogue with many facts and figures from his reservoir of memory and experience.

I don’t believe there is any public interest in installing these Smart Meters. The utility companies say they have an easement to your meter and that this easement allows them to install any kind of meter they want. This is just what they claim. If you look at an easement document, the utility company has the right to read their meter and maintain their meter. So it does not say they have a right to install whatever meter they like on private property. People have a right to keep their meters and refuse to have a Smart Meter installed. They have this right whether there is an “opt out” program in place, or not.

Basically the utility companies in this country have been behaving like thugs and mobsters. In many places where there is little known awareness of Smart Meters; they are forcing them on people and cutting off the electricity if people refuse Smart Meter installation. There are other cases where people are paying an opt out fee, but they install another Smart Meter (a digital or one that transmits fewer wireless frequencies). They do not keep their AMI meter. They are tricking them. If they don’t pay, they are being threatened with electricity disconnection or their electricity is being disconnected.

I don’t use the words “mobsters” and “thugs” lightly. Very literally what they are engaged in is extortion.

This whole Smart grid program is one of the largest technology roll outs in history, and was completely forced on the public without any consultation or planning process. When you have the funding provided by the Federal Government and the State Government authorizing the installing of a system where there are problems and the corporations running the government you have a situation where you have lost your democracy entirely. When people look to the utility company or the utility commission by contacting them to ask what their rights are, people are being taken advantage of and lied to. People need to exercise their own authority; neither the utility company nor the government is going to do it for them.

Q: What can a resident do if they don’t want a Smart Meter and how can they go about keeping one from being installed, or having one removed? I note in email letters I have read people often write reams of letters to their utility companies and to local government officials in their areas to no avail.

If a resident has an analog meter we recommend that (our website recommends – http://www.stopsmartmeters.org ) they lock them up and send a certified letter to the utility refusing permission to install the Smart Meter. If they have a Smart Meter, we recommend that they write the utility a certified letter and demand they remove the Smart Meter and replace it with an analog meter. If the utility company refuses to remove an unauthorized Smart Meter, we recommend that they purchase an analog meter online and have the Smart Meter physically removed the Smart Meter from their property. It is against the law for the utility company to install a dangerous unit piece of equipment on your property. Most utility companies are not government agencies. They are companies, just like any business you do business with. They are a monopoly and that is where they derive their authority from. They derive their authority from threatening to remove their services.

It is a waste of time to try to convince your utility company about Smart Meters as an individual, but it is crucial to educate the community at large. I think writing and putting pressure on local government officials is very important. As a result of this kind of pressure more than 57 local governments in California have come out opposing Smart Meters. Some of these are Marin County, California (2011). The Town of Fairfax was the first in 2010 and they were unique in that they sent their police force out to enforce the law. As a result of that, Fairfax is virtually the only town in PG&E territory where the company has not done a wide deployment of Smart Meters. The lesson here is that when people empower themselves and not defer to the utility they can be successful.

Q: Why do utility companies want to install smart meters? Is it true many fail and have proved hazardous when installed to the point of catching on fire? Is organizing against them growing, and how successful is their installation going? Can you give us some numbers on success and failure, even examples in different areas?

Utility companies want to and are installing Smart Meters because they believe they will make a profit. There is a lot of evidence between an industry that builds the Smart Meters and the stimulus funds, and surveillance and big data selling your personal, private data …and really it was a seizure of public and rate payer funds. The government, the California Public Utility Commission was actually pushing PG&E to install Smart Meters. The commissioners on the CPUC have deep and personal connections with the Smart Meter firms. I realize that the things I am saying are extreme and radical, but that’s really what the reality is here. Everyone who has worked at the CPUC knows that this is the case. It’s all about money in the end.

There have been hundreds if not thousands of fires and electrical problems arising from smart meters. Hundreds of thousands of the new Smart Meters have been recalled in Florida, Saskatchewan, Arizona, Oregon, and last week in mid-September the Nevada State Fire Marshall called for an investigation into the fire risk from Smart Meters. A woman and her pets died in Reno, Nevada (she was 61 years old). That was what really forced the fire department to make this public statement.

There are two major reasons why Smart Meters are failing and burning. The first is incorrect installation. Utilities are hiring temp workers to perform an electrician’s job. And often they are not installed in the socket properly, leaving a gap between the Smart Meter and the socket that can cause a gap. The other reason is poor quality circuitry. Basically, this is a novel device. You are taking all the electrical current and running it through an electronic device with circuit board that is exposed to the elements 24/7, and this combination of heat/cold/wet/dry has likely put homes at risk. This is not a good design, or a safe design. It’s like the Enron scandal all over again, but magnified. You have these guys sitting in a room somewhere planning how best to pry the most money out of people’s pockets.

There are now hundreds of groups around the world. There are organizations in nearly forty US States—many are Stop Smart Meters! groups. There is Stop Smart Meters! Georgia, Stop Smart Meters! New York, and so on. There is a rising tide of public awareness. There’s been a spread of awareness that has preceded (and in some cases, followed) Smart Meter deployments. Even if a community has no advanced knowledge about the risk before they are installed, they soon realize the problems. Often people start suffering health problems, or there are fires, or people get inflated bills, or there is interference by the radio frequency signals. People’s electronics or garage door openers malfunction or security devices fail. It’s because they use the unlicensed band wireless which is around 900 mhz. Everything uses that.

It’s been a pleasure making your acquaintance. Thank you for answering these questions. If you’d like to add something, please add it here.

Basically, there’s this school of thought or philosophy that we use every available school of technology that comes along regardless of the potential downsides are: it’s like a religion. People worship their Ipads and Iphones. They worship this technology and we’ve lost our human connection. It’s true whether you look at wireless technology, genetically modified foods, or fracking. It doesn’t seem to matter whether there are harmful side effects. The Smart Meter has become something of a symbol of technocratic capitalism and people and communities are rejecting it. So the way that we see it is the Smart Meter movement is a backlash, a fall from grace of the technology at any cost mindset, of the mind-frame that there is a techno-fix for anything. We were promised energy savings and a more reliable grid. The reality is we have a less reliable grid, more energy consumption and new and uncertain hazards.

Joshua Hart can be emailed here: info@stopsmartmeters.org
Joshua Hart’s website is here: http://stopsmartmeters.org/

ADDENDUM I
STATEMENT BY JOSHUA HART ON REFUSAL TO ALLOW SMART METER INSTALLATION IN HIS HOME

We spoke to PSREC Plumas Sierra Rural Electric Cooperative before moving here and I explained I have a medical condition of electrical sensitivity (ES) and this medical condition was caused by exposure to a bank of PGE Smart Meters. This was July, 2013. We spoke to them on the phone and they said they did not have an opt out program per se. They used a type of Smart Meter called AMR. This was different from the PGE system. The PGE system is a mesh network; it provides instantaneous surveillance capabilities. The signals go directly back to the utility through a cell tower network.

With the AMR system in Plumas and many other rural areas, the meters transmit constantly and a man comes around in a truck once a month. When we moved in in July, we asked them to remove the Smart Meter in the house and they did that within 48 hours and replaced it with an analog meter. Then they asked for a copy of the letter from the physician, which I supplied.

In October, 2013 the PSREC board met and decided to introduce an “opt out” fee of $141 to switch to the analog meter, and $15 month thereafter. We had never agreed to pay any fees, so we declined to pay the additional fees, from of course our electricity usage. We met with them many times in person, including the board.

The utility company then said that unless we paid the fee, they would install a Smart Meter in our home, or we would be disconnected. They told us we had to choose one of the options. They have customers with analog meters living in remote areas, probably 100s of them, they allow them to read their own meters at no charge. We are not considered to be in a remote area however.

We paid every cent of every kilowatt we used. But on February 19, 2014 Plumas Rural Electric Cooperative in Plumas County, California came to our house with a crew and said they were going to install a Smart Meter [police were not present], and this was knowing my physician had said no Smart Meter. We said you do not have permission to install the Smart Meter. And they said “we are going to disconnect you at the secondary.” They literally cut our wires at our neighbor’s pole in the middle of winter. For the last seven and a half months we’ve been living without electricity. It’s brought my wife to tears.

We’ve been getting by with the support of neighbors and friends. We’ve been living out of coolers and camp stoves and camping out in our house. It is a three bedroom house. Despite my wife falling and having to wear her arm in a sling, and another letter from her doctor saying turn on the electricity, they refused. The utility has abused the law- and their customers- in our opinion. They’ve taken photographs into our home and invaded our privacy; they’ve spread lies about us to people who’ve called us and saying we haven’t paid our bills on time. The general manager, Bob Marshall, yelled at us and tried to stop us from filming a utility meeting. As of October 8, 2014, we are still without any electricity. This is definitely a result of speaking out about Smart Meters in our community.

A PARAPHRASED STATEMENT BY JOSHUA HART

ADDENDUM II

CONVERSATION BY PHONE WITH PLUMAS SIERRA RURAL ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE
SPOKESWOMAN CORBY GARDENER BY PHONE, OCTOBER, 2014
REGARDING SMART METERS AND JOSHUA HART WITH PETER MENKIN

From Peter Menkin’s home office in Mill Valley, California to the PSREC offices in Portola California. A half hour conversation. This is a kind of transcript.

“We have older digital meters, but we do not have Smart Meters. The technology we use is not considered a Smart Meter. The digital meters we use, once a month they emit a radio signal and that goes to our meter reader once a month as he goes driving by his unit collects the reading. It sends out a signal and wakes the meter up and then it goes back to sleep. (Note that Joshua Hart refers to these PSREC units as Smart Meters in his interview, though does say that many rural cooperatives use a kind of Smart Meter. Note by Peter Menkin.)

“If we are denied access to our equipment and if there is non-payment we will turn people off. And of course if they are moving or something, we will turn their power off.” Says Corby Gardener, Spokeswoman. (Text in quotations are direct quotes from Corby Gardener.)

Not many people refuse to have these digital meters installed that are emitting radio signals. (My words, Peter Menkin, interviewer, unless in quotations.)

“We service 6,700 homes.”

They are a cooperative. As a cooperative we are owned by our members and we are not for profit. So we are governed by a Board of Directors elected by the membership.

Anybody who gets electricity is a member (my words).

“We were formed in 1937.”

“There are very few of the analog meters left (in people’s homes). We do the initial meter exchange, and there is a cost. There is a cost saving overall. We get a more accurate reading and the meter reader doesn’t have to walk the homes and get a reading. This is part of our system maintenance. We have not had a lot of problems installing the new digital meters. There is improved reliability and because there are fewer moving parts than the analog meters they don’t fail as often.”

Joshua Hart is the only major protester regarding what the Plumas County service area or our entire service territory that encompasses parts of four counties. (My words.) He has not been a big problem for the utility. (My words.)

The spokeswoman can be reaching at this email: cgardner@psrec.coop
The website for the utility is here: http://www.psrec.coop/