The Indybay says Protesters Halt Smart Meter Installation in Santa Cruz County

Heidi Bazzano, one of the protesters at 38th and Portola this morning, said, “there are so many problems with ‘smart’ meters. PG&E, the government, and any hacker worth his salt will know when you wake up, what appliances you use, when you go on vacation. The meters overcharge people, increase carbon emissions, expose us to EMF which is a confirmed carcinogen, and worst of all, we’re paying for them through hikes in our electric rates!”

“One of the protesters” is not exactly a qualified opinion. And their description of a hacker sounds a lot like the bogeyman or Santa Claus rather than a real threat. Watch out, he knows when you have been bad or good…this makes the protester sound uninformed. Confirmed carcinogen? Confirmed where?

Those who are electrically sensitive have reported that the intense bursts of radiation from ‘smart’ meters are amongst the worst they have ever experienced. People throughout the state have been reporting headaches, nausea, dizziness, sleep disruption and other health impacts after smart meters are installed. PG&E has declined to remove the new meters even though they are causing adverse health impacts, leading some local residents to flee the state and stay with relatives. Some have even been forced into homelessness, living in their cars with the hope that their smart meter will be removed.

The health risks still all sound theoretical. Some might correlate smart meters to general health issues but where are the audits, studies or tests that prove causation? A placebo test or control group study would be interesting. I can understand an opposition to meters after billing mistakes are caught by auditors. This problem was documented and proven. I do not understand the vague health argument.

Indybay does not offer insights. They link instead to StopSmartMeters, which gives only more vague references, laced with heavy-handed sarcasm.

PG&ESE: “A SmartMeter device transmits relatively weak radio signals, resembling those of many other devices we use every day, like cell phones and baby monitors. A major radio station, by contrast, usually transmits with 50,000 times as much power.”

English Translation: “A DumbMeter device transmits relatively weak radio signals compared with your microwave oven (which we initially asked the FCC for permission to install but we realized that humans who are cooked like hot dogs have trouble authorizing a debit account). We’ll conveniently neglect to mention that cell phone and baby monitor wireless technologies have been implicated in brain tumors and other nasty lethal ailments, trusting that the public’s ignorance of wireless impacts will hold out long enough for us to finish installation.”

First, this is a counter-point to the entire argument. It says the SmartMeter company is motivated to do no harm because they need consumers to be healthy enough to pay bills. That could be the end of their protest right there.

Second, the style reads to me like a story from The Onion. I might think the site is a hoax except for links to real news stories about City Councils considering whether to block installation.

Are Councils and local government driven by fear more than any evidence of risk? An article in SFGate says this is very likely.

Of all the complaints filed with PG&E, 16 percent came from customers who did not yet have a smart meter, Burt said. In other words, they couldn’t be reacting to a mechanical problem with the meter.

Another bit of evidence suggests that fears rather than malfunctions drive at least some of the complaints. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District gets more customer complaints about its own smart meters following newspaper or television stories about PG&E’s meters. That includes stories about the meters’ accuracy as well as complaints that the wireless devices could pose a health risk – an idea that PG&E strenuously rejects.

“Whenever we see a spike in stories about PG&E’s smart meters, we see a spike in complaints,” said SMUD spokesman Chris Capra.

What happens when there is a spike in stories about stories about PG&E smart meters?