EWEB GM reversed 1st-in-nation smart meter opt-in

Presenter: EWEB commissioners heard public comments May 5 about smart meters, with one speaker reflecting on the legacy of General Manager Frank Lawson. Kathy Ging:

Kathy Ging: This is Kathy Ging, a co-founder of Families for Safe Technology.

We started in 2011. And if it weren’t for Oregon Sen. James Manning, EWEB would’ve forged ahead with a thoughtless wireless smart meter build-out. But he was studying for a PhD in ethics online. He had retired from the military after 20-some years, and he had remorse about the fact that there was some hanky-panky going on with the smart meters in other countries, and he stopped the vote.

And so Dick Helgeson, (Bob) Cassidy and James Manning all prevented the build-out. And then what happened is, once Frank Lawson got to be general manager, within months of his getting in there, he convinced the board that we should not have a true opt-in. 

Now Eugene, Oregon had the first opt-in in the country. Hawaii had the second, led by a PhD woman over there. And this opt-in meant that you had to actually proactively want a wireless smart meter. 

Well, that got turned around 180 degrees because of Frank Lawson’s leadership. And as a result, now we are stuck with people not only not knowing how dangerous these meters are, with eroding the plastic around the electric wires can cause fires, and you need surge suppressors, you need house grounding at the utility meter, and I just got off the phone again today with a radio frequency engineer in Virginia who worked many years as a civilian for the Navy about the dangers of these meters, and she could talk to you for an hour about it.

Well, what I wanted to say: This is not fair at all for low-income people or others to pay that $170 fee for you to do it, and you should go back to a true opt-out. 

So I hope the new general manager looks at the history of this movement to understand that the people were gradually left out from the IERP (Integrated Electric Resource Plan) meetings that was supposed to be done every five years—we had no more public forums.

There was a recommendation for a health committee to be working with EWEB and writing the information about smart meters. It turns out that I knew more than the EWEB engineers after my thousands of hours of research in this topic and talking to people from all over the country.

So we are really in a lurch right now, what to do about this fee that’s really, it’s not right at all. And I know you think that $11 is pretty cheap for a monthly fee, but you don’t understand. You need to reverse course and go educate people, which is what we begged you to do.

EWEB commissioner: Rachel McKinnis:

Rachel McKinnis: Bravo, bravo. I applaud you, Board: Well done. With great strategy and patience, you have slowly taken away our right of choice. 

First, you took away our choice by installing forcefully harmful, smart meters on our homes under the guise that we would have the option to opt out and keep our analog meters.

Then you took away that choice to keep the analog meter under the guise that we could opt out of the wireless signal signaling on a smart meter. Even though we’re still stuck with the dirty electricity, now you’re taking away that choice as well. Because by forcing us to pay a monthly fee, to have the signal turned off is really no choice at all.

Your fees take advantage of those with less resources, like my neighbor who’s on disability. His smart meter is connected to my home. So now I no longer have the choice to live in a home with no toxic RF signaling from a smart meter. I am sure your plan to increase fees is only a matter of time, until there is no choice left at all. So job well done.

I won’t tell you again how I began suffering from breathing issues and insomnia once the smart meter was installed on my home. I won’t bore you with the mounting scientific evidence on the harmful effects of the smart meter. I won’t do that because that has already been done multiple times and you have made the choice not to listen.

You have made the choice to believe outdated industry-funded research. You have made the choice to ignore the concerns and the pleads of the public. You have made the choice to choose profit and progress and power over the people.

You claim that the proposed fees are to cover the expenses associated with a manual meter reading. What about all of the extra costs from the smart meter, job loss system failures, constant updates and device replacement because the smart meter doesn’t last anywhere near as long as the analog meters? What about all of the extra costs from the smart meter? 

As our board, you have a responsibility to protect the citizens of Eugene. So I implore you to do just that, protect us. Please do not impose this fee on the people who already struggle with their health. 

My only hope is that right now I’m talking to you people face-to-face, hopefully full of compassion and empathy. Please do not strong-arm us into monthly fees and force us to live in a home with devices that are making a lot of us sick.

If you employ, impose this fee, you take away the only choice we have left. Please protect us. Please show compassion. Please do not take away our last choice. 

EWEB: Toby Gamberoni: 

Toby Gamberoni: Hi there, folks. Not a big public speaker, I’m a little nervous.  But I just wanted to see if I could touch your hearts, because for me a lot of communication is about feeling, receptivity, and listening. 

I know that this is part of your job, and I understand that, and I’m not disputing that you’re not doing your job well.

However, I do have a couple of things that are coming up for me. I do appreciate gratitude 100%. Wish we were ruling gratitude all the time, and then the world would be a lot nicer place. 

However, you might label me a hippie or a tin hat believer. But when I first came to Eugene, I was very impressed with EWEB being what I considered a semi-democrat, community-orientated business. I’m not so sure it’s there anymore. But I don’t know.

However, what I’ve realized is that back in the day, I was probably the first or second person to sign up for the green energy or green power aspect, which I paid, I think it was something like 50 cents more a month for or something like that.

It wasn’t very much, but I was like, yeah, or five, $5 a month I think it was. And I was like, ‘Yes, I’m totally up for that.’ Why? Because I wanted to create a green movement, or more, a greener movement. However, I soon discovered that all the people who really cared, who wanted a greener city, were paying more.

I’m like, ‘Wait a minute. Isn’t that the wrong way around? Shouldn’t the people who want a dirtier city, one more polluted one—well, the pollution from the planes are now going over my house. Shouldn’t they be the ones who are paying a bit more and the people who are actually wanting green power and trying to keep organic their garden, etc., etc.?’

Sorry. Like I said, I’m a bit nervous. ‘Shouldn’t they be the ones that are paying less?’ So I looked at this and I’m like, ‘No.’ And years later, now supposedly everything is green. I’m like, ‘Well, there’s green and then there’s greenwashing.’  

And I realized that when by paying $5 extra a month for my green power, I was actually getting the same power as everybody else for start, which was kind of interesting.

And secondly of all, why would, like I said before, why are the incentives not to encourage people to make the world a better place? Why are they castigating people who are actually trying to do the right thing?

So that moves me on from green power to smart meters and smart meters, for me, I didn’t know much about them. My wife, who’s a great researcher, does know a lot more about it. Oh. 

EWEB: The dreaded buzzer. 

Toby Gamberoni: Sorry, can I just have one sentence just to summarize? I’m just going to summarize that I had two friends who came around and did my meters, and they were great friends and I love seeing them. Now they don’t have jobs, just want to say that.

And secondly of all, the cost of all these smart meters must be astronomical. And lastly, my head is right next to my meter and it’s $15,000 (Thank you) to move it 10 yards away. And I did not sleep when they tested it for two days. I didn’t even know. 

EWEB: Thank you. Alfredo Gormezano:

Alfredo Gormezano: So I am also here to speak about these supposed ‘smart meters.’

I’ve had my account since 1999. I’ve been paying every month a bill that includes a meter reader coming out to visit my meter every month to read it, to suddenly be charged extra for it when I’m already a low-income person. Struggling to pay my EWEB bills is rather unfair.

I think that if any fee change is going to happen, maybe the people who are willing to risk their health by having their meter broadcast, maybe they should be getting a discount instead, and we just pay our same rates. Definitely not adding anything onto it.

I am unclear if this, I’m not sure if it was 150 or $175 to opt out applies to us who have already opted out, but it should not apply to anyone. We have been paying in our bills, especially with all these added fees, these service fees, etc., we’ve been paying for years and years and years to have, again, readers come out.

We’ve also been paying rates that probably are higher than they should have been in order to implement this whole program that so many people in this city did not want. And if you’ve got the money to give millions of dollars out for grants—’cause I’ve been at meetings where people come in asking for millions of dollars for grants.

You certainly have the money to lower our rates because we’re the ones who are struggling to pay for those grants for people. So again, I will suggest, because for many years, EBS talked about how do we help low income people? How do we help low income people? Well, the way I’ve continually suggested and I see no action has been done is just.

Drop off our service fees for low income people, if we qualify for customer care, if we qualify for EBT or anything else like that, just drop off those fees. There are plenty of people that have electricity that can afford to pay those fees. Don’t do it on our backs. Yep. And let’s see. Oh and yes, and one store that I know, one local small business, tells me that since they’ve got the smart meter installed, their electricity bill has almost doubled.

So I don’t know what’s going on with that, but something is wrong. I know my bill seems higher than it has been. And that’s without any extra charges. So I’m hoping that instead of this just being a hot air session where we get to blow off our steam, that actually something is done with the things that we have been saying all along and that I’m saying right now.

Sandy Sanders: My name is Sandy Sanders and I’m here to discuss the meter-reading charges. Meter reading. These smart meters are insane to start off with, but this, this will be my statement.

Our home has an EWEB smart meter installed, with RF reporting turned off, with manual reading.

The meter resides just outside my small home office window where I work every day, sitting just four feet from the meter, and windows in between. We are wireless and RF-free using Emerald Broadband, fiber-optic cabling, ethernet going to directly to our computers.

I cannot sit within six feet of a wireless router, having discovered this vulnerability to RF broadcasting around 2010. We must have an RF-disabled meter.

We understand EWEB does not charge rural ratepayers manual reading fees where RF signaling cannot overcome hilly difficult regions. We understand that EWEB offers low-income discounts of $280 a year.

As I read the agenda charts of the yearly costs for manually reading smart meters: $175 enrollment fee and $138 fee for manual reading equals $313 a year. EWEB estimates $220,000 in annual cost recovery. If those fees were divided equally among 99,649 EWEB customers, that would equal $2.21 a year per customer, or 19 cents a month per customer.

Is 19 cents a month too high a price to pay for the cost of doing business in providing 1.8% of the ratepayers the right of consent for RF-free electricity delivery? I think not.

We know RF and EMF have documented harms, which we have the human right to protect ourselves from. I believe if EWEB owner-customers had adequate information about the dangers of smart meter RF and EMF for sensitive people, and ultimately all biological life, they would vote to accept a 19-cent-a-month burden as reasonable.

Another option to avoid manual reading costs would be to have ratepayers digitally photograph the meter on the same day as current schedule and send it via email or upload it to the website. Charging only RF/EMF-sensitive owner customers MMR (manual meter reading) fees is purely political punishment for behavioral disobedience.

The following statement by EWEB proves this point: ‘As participation in manual meter reading (MMR) declines, the per customer cost of providing this service increases. The fees will be reviewed annually with no cap established at this time.’

Fewer MMR customers per EWEB’s own cost analysis means lower costs for customers, not higher. EWEB is understood by owner-customers to be a nonprofit, publicly-owned utility. 

EWEB: Joshua Korn:

Joshua Korn: Regarding the smart meters, I’ve been here many times talking to y’all about this. This has been obviously an ongoing issue from the start. I want to say: Y’all are really good at spending our money on wasteful things like this advanced metering infrastructure and depleting the workforce that relies on a local public utility for really good work.

You know, what happened to all these meter readers? Where did they go? Still billing us for ’em. But, you know, you seem to have a good way of spending that money on something else. 

And, you know, as someone that really is concerned about my health when it comes to wireless technology, I, like some of the others have described, I live my life with no wireless technology in my home, got no wifi, everything’s hard-wired.

I’m, you know, trying to help my mom who recently moved into a home that it has all this wireless technology and she’s slipping into dementia. This is really common. People are affected by these things without knowing that these are what is the cause or one of the primary causes driving it. And, you know, you’re, you just keep looking at the industry-funded studies and ‘Oh, it’s all good.’

And that we’re under the threshold, which is our regulations here in this country are ridiculously high as far as safety thresholds compared to pretty much everywhere else in the world. Europe, for example, most countries in Europe have extremely low levels in terms of safety standards that are allowed.

And, here, of course, ’cause the FCC is a captured agency, so, you know, they, they just established these regulations in ‘96 before any of this technology existed. 

And you know, they, you, you’re just embracing it and acting like it’s all good and okay. Yeah, we can, we can do all this stuff and it—

This is wrong. This is hurting people. These fees are, you know, it’s like you go through this, this whole thing of, okay, you’re the mean cost of all these utilities we’ve compared to is $115 and the median is $100. Oh, we’ll just charge $175, ’cause you know, you, you come up with your direct labor cost of $123.

What? You know, where do you get these numbers? And, and, you know, $11.50 per month. Okay. Some of us can possibly afford that for the moment, but when is that going? 

EWEB: Can you wrap it up, please? 

Joshua Korn: When is that going to increase? And we want, we want data on how long? Anyway— 

EWEB: Thank you. 

Joshua Korn: This is not okay. You shouldn’t do it.

Presenter: Eva Edelman:

Eva Edelman: In health, they have— In new health research and technological research that affects the public, that can have a potential effect there that might be detrimental. There is what you call the precautionary principle. 

I don’t know if this world here or America adheres to it very much, but that is, you don’t do the new technology—the new smart meter, the little nuclear power plants—you don’t do it until it’s proven. 

Not to be dangerous, not to hurt the public. You don’t just do it and do a mass experiment and let people see if they live or die or let me get Parkinson’s and shake all the time. Especially those early days when you’re testing the media and I, that was so crazy. And do no harm.

Don’t you know why install something that could be dangerous? I know you have studies, people have talked to you. Why is that there when they’re, when it’s believed by some researchers that this can hurt people, why is it being installed, like, willy-nilly all over the country? Why that’s wrong? So.

I thought it lived forever. Now I’m like this, you know, and it’s like, why? Like I think you definitely don’t charge. You don’t charge people to try to not be harmed. You charge, you really should charge the people who try to harm them who I tried harm them, like kind of like obliviously allow them to be harmed by installing new technology that is potentially extremely dangerous on so many levels, like the heart and nervous system, the very ability to live a reasonable life with reasonable health.

It’s like so dangerous and you’re just going, ‘Oh, we’re going to charge the people who think it’s bad.’  Well, that’s a mistake. So I just basically beg you to reconsider the whole smart readers, much less charging people, often low-income who are hurt, who think, who claim (probably justly in my opinion), that they are being hurt by them or they could be.

So just a little moral reexamination would be great. 

EWEB:  The last speaker is Carlis Nixon.

Carlis Nixon: I don’t want to revisit all of the issues about our smart readers, so-called smart readers are a good thing or not. I mostly want to talk about the fee, which I think is coercive and inappropriate. 

My meter is about eight feet from where I spend most of my time in my house. And I will pay whatever you force me to pay to not have it be a smart meter, but I think that the fees are punitive and I’m not seeing anything in the discussion of fees that talks about difference. 

So I’m seeing this thing about, ‘Well, it’s going to cost us this much to send somebody and this much and this much and this,’ but I’m not seeing anything that says the difference between the cost of not using, of opting out and having a smart meter is this much.

So one of the things that I think hasn’t been addressed is to say, what is the actual cost for people who have the so-called smart meters and then subtract that. I think the fees are, especially the sort of opt-out fee is absurdly high. 

And I have also a question about the opting out. And I think I would speak to sort of credibility at this point. I remember way back when I asked somebody from EWEB on the phone if the signaling was constant and they said, ‘Oh no, it’s not constant.’ 

Well, come to find out that what they meant is that there were a little sort of microsecond or half second or whatever gaps. But it’s basically 24/7 with those little tiny, tiny, tiny gaps. And I felt like that was sort of lying by speaking the literal truth, but being very misleading. 

And I found out later that that’s what they’d actually meant. And I would just like to be assured, among other things, I mean, I’d like you to consider an absurdly lower fee, but, I’ll pay whatever you force me to pay.

But when people opt out, is the meter actually not signaling? I’d just like to be assured of that in some way that’s credible. Because having been misled before, I’d like to make sure that I’m not just getting the hype, that I’m getting a real piece of information if I choose to pay whatever you choose to charge me.

I mean, I will choose to pay it, but I just, it doesn’t make sense. It just seems punitive and coercive and I don’t really, can’t really add anything to that. Thank you.

Presenter: That is public comment at EWEB May 5. Covering boards and commissions, neighborhoods and nonprofits, preparedness and public comment, this is KEPW-WholeCommunity.News.