Three Items: Important CPUC Meeting this Wednesday: Please Write to Commissioners; 2. Physicians’ Group Recommends Moratorium on Smart Meters; 3. Santa Cruz Health Department Report on Smart Meters.

1. CPUC Meeting
This Wednesday, February 1, 2012,  the CPUC will be voting on a smart meter opt-out for PG&E (The CPUC advisor has said this ruling will ultimately apply to SCE and SDG&E customers, also)  which will allow ratepayers to have an analog meter if they agree to pay an initial upfront and an ongoing monthly fee. The current delay list will be dismantled and if you do not sign up to pay, you will have your analog removed and a smart meter installed.

Most of us in Southern California are unable to attend the San Francisco meeting. However, we can give feedback by contacting the CPUC commissioners and the CPUC judge directly via e-mail and telling them  There Should be No Fee Whatsoever:

A) The utilities have already received billions of dollars in federal stimulus funds (your taxpayer money) plus approval to pass on costs of the Smart Meter infrastructure (including profits for their corporate shareholders) to ratepayers for years to come.

B) The utility monopolies should not be allowed to price gouge or double dip by charging ratepayers (who already paid) twice for their analogs. If anything, as one person said, since Smart Meters cost $300 a piece, instead of being charged, analog customers should get a credit.

C) The fees discriminate against the poor, those on limited income and the disabled. Some say they are a form of extortion because they require those who suffer health effects or have medical implants to “pay up” to protect their health. Such fees may also be in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

D) The CPUC should not only reject opt-out fees for electric “smart” meters, but for all “smart” utility (gas and water) meters. No resident should have to pay, for example, to stop SoCalGas from attaching a worthless wireless radiation emitting device to their gas meters.

Below are the e-mail addresses of the CPUC commissioners and Judge Amy Yip Kikugawa (who had been asking the utilities some interesting questions, such as to provide disclosure about the pulsed radiation “smart” meters emit)  Please send them feedback. Not only will the Northern California ruling affect all of California, but people across the country (and even internationally) are watching closely.

CPUC Commissioners
Catherine Sandoval cjs@cpuc.ca.gov
Michael Peevey (president) mp1@cpuc.ca.gov
Michel Florio mf1@cpuc.ca.gov
Tiimothy Simon tas@cpuc.ca.gov
Mark Ferron fer@cpuc.ca.gov
Judge Amy Yip Kikugawa
amy.yip-kikugawa@cpuc.ca.gov

Two Other Items, if you haven’t seen them.

2. Physicians’ Group (American Academy of Environmental Medicine) Adopts Resolution Against Smart Meters: Says Cindy Sage, “This represents the first national physicians’ group to look in-depth at wireless  health risks; and to advise the public and decision-makers about preventative public health actions that are necessary.” See here to read their letter.

3. The Santa Cruz Health Department report on Health Risks of Smart Meters (scroll to page 9 of this document). See also Susan Brinchman’s article on this in La Mesa Patch.  She observes it is  “the first California County Health Department smart meter report.” (She quotes most of the report in her article, also).
One other note about it. I was talking to a statistics professor about the Inverse Square Law.  According to the diagram in this report’s addendum (page 17) people who sleep with a smart meter on the other side of the wall less than a foot away (we have residences like this in Turtle Rock, unfortunately and probably throughout the city) could be exposed to 450 times (whole body exposure) higher radiation than that from a cell phone.  And it’s not just the length of a phone call. It’s all night long while they are sleeping (cells are more vulnerable to RF when we sleep).
People often say–don’t worry about the radiation because the inverse square law means that distance is your friend.  However, in this situation the inverse square law works against the person as being this close to a smart meter is at least two feet closer than the diagram–that is the typical distance they used to measure smart meter RF impact.