ROBERT MATAS
VANCOUVER— From Thursday’s Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Jul. 06, 2011 7:01PM EDT Last updated Wednesday, Jul. 06, 2011 7:03PM EDT
BC Hydro is modifying its smart-meter program in response to concerns about exposure to electromagnetic radiation, although Hydro still insists the devices pose no danger to health.
“We clearly don’t believe there is a health concern,” Gary Murphy, chief project officer for the $930-million program, said in an interview.
BC Hydro will not allow anyone to opt out of the program. However, customers who are concerned about health issues can relocate the meters on their properties at their own cost.
“We’re not the kind of company that is simply going to go out and play hardball,” Mr. Murphy said.
“There are people who adamantly believe there are [health concerns.] They are our customers and we want to be respectful and … responsive. We will do what is reasonable and, to the best of our ability, try to find a mutually acceptable solution,” Mr. Murphy said.
BC Hydro this week received its first shipment of the so-called smart meters, which transmit information about energy use several times a day. The smart meters will replace electro-mechanical meters in every home and business in the province by the end of 2012.
Most independent, third-party reviews of the impact of the radio frequency that smart meters emit found no convincing evidence of any health issues, provincial health officer Perry Kendall said in an interview.
“A lot of people clearly have symptoms that are real, and they feel [the symptoms are] associated with radio frequency,” he said. “But from a medical perspective, it is very hard to demonstrate the symptoms are a response to radio frequency.”
About 200 people have expressed concerns to BC Hydro about health issues. Some have asked to keep their old meters. Some have been satisfied with additional information about the lack of evidence of any health issues. A group called Citizens Against Unsafe Emissions is lobbying municipalities to push BC Hydro to impose a moratorium on smart meters. The group is also considering filing a human-rights complaint.
Sharon Noble, spokesperson for the group, said in an interview she is aware of about 20 people in the province who say they have been diagnosed by naturopaths as having symptoms related to electromagnetic sensitivities. “Those people have a right to not be subjected to something that harms them,” she said.
Ms. Noble said she has spent more than $40,000 trying to shield her home from radiation from 56-cell, FM and other transmitters in her neighbourhood of Colwood, outside Victoria. “I’ll be damned if I let smart meters be put on my home,” she said.
BC Hydro’s offer to allow the meter to be relocated on the property was not reasonable, she said, because it could cost up to $10,000.
NDP energy critic John Horgan said he was not convinced smart meters cause health problems. “But there is certainly a whole bunch of people, based on my [e-mail] inbox, that feel that way,” he said. “If people do not want these things on their house, they should not have them . . . I believe they have legitimate concerns in their minds that should be canvassed by government.”
Mr. Horgan said the decision to bring in smart meters should have been reviewed by the B.C. Utilities Commission, which could have held public hearings to debate all issues. The B.C. government last year passed special legislation to exempt the smart-meter program and other projects from review by the commission.
Mr. Murphy said BC Hydro was “totally confident” that the level of emissions was safe. “Exposure to radio frequency from a smart meter over its entire 20-year life span is equal to a single 30-minute cellphone call,” he said. Also, the meters transmit in total for about one minute a day and are not transmitting constantly, he added.
The strength of the signal decreases exponentially with distance, Mr. Murphy said. Those who remain concerned can arrange with an electrical contractor to put the meter on their garage or elsewhere on their property, he said, adding that the cost of relocating will vary depending on type of dwelling and location of the meter.
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#1 by Mia Nony on July 10, 2011 - 2:55 am
There seems to be a decision to bluster on through with the likes of former Ontario advocate Perry Kendall backing and with an almost blase “Just Trust Us – We Aren’t Like BP And Those Other Greenwash Corporations, We Are Sincere And Authentic” PR approach to this issue.
If they really cared one wit, Hydro could stop the subcontractor Corix from removing 2 million perfectly working non microwave radiative analog meters with a lifespan of 50 years and taking them to the landfill and replacing them with s/meters they got us to pick up the tab for, true lifespan about 8 years, at which point we pick up the next tab for the next ones. This is all about planned obsolescence for surveillance
Of late one notes that Hydro acts as if caught off guard by the extent of public knowledge. One detects a defensive attitude overlay creeping into the borderline dismissive tone.
And when it comes to the false freedom of that other non “option” to NIMBY the meter and to “relocate meters” elsewhere on one’s property, think again.
Try to remember that these meters are only one of many dirty electricity emissions points in a spider web system, one of many focal points and sources of massive radiation in a mesh microwave network.
Your house wiring is also affected by microwave data surges which do not stay politely inside the walls.
Same thing goes all the booster lined streets and roads.
While we can debate the finer points of the idea to spread microwave energy around more evenly by relocating meters away from our houses, bear in mind that Hydro is already doing this.
The idea is to blanket the entire province, which involves the use of the equally lethal mini smart meter boosters, placed all over the place on Hydro utility poles.
Even that so called compromise isn’t one. And then there is the one they never offered, to relocate all of these meters at their own expense on their own utility poles at the roadside next to the microwave boosters they are also installing to boost the smart meter power.
That way only the birds, bees, bats, butterflies, (and of course vehicle drivers, pets, and kids) farther from your houses would be bathed in microwaves.? Hardly. This is one large field they are creating, and invisibility does not mean the field is not there.
That way all else with which we share this environment, all navigational creatures, will be unwitnessed as they quietly fail to be able to overcome the electrosmog “noise” of smart grid artificial current which overrides and drowns out earth’s natural magnetism, the guiding principle for all such creatures.
That way we could continue to pretend we do not understand colony collapse disorder, bees with shot immune systems which succumb to diseases, and we could ignore the vital aspect of it where the very bees we cannot survive without are driven to fly off and never return.
That way we could ignore the hard science that EMFs destroy the magnetite in all navigational creatures’ brains which is what makes it possible to retain a sense of direction.
As for those kids who use the cul de sac for hockey, hey, cancer takes years to show up so not to worry.
And lest we forget? There are the “other” smart meters, the collector meters, to be placed on the most unsuspecting homes, the ones which are even more powerful and which are there to collect info from about 100o neighbouring meters and then beam it up to the satellite. .
Hydro could forget the booster systems and hard wire the meters as done in Ontario and the eastern US.
But they won’t.
If you have a private pole or structure on your rural property, any electrician will tell you, you already have the option to relocate any utility meter farther away from your own house and, say, closer to your neighbour’s highly susceptible honey bee hives in the adjoining field, for instance.
This is not something they “grant” you.
Does anyone really need corporate permission to relocate a meter into the power lines at a different juncture in order to jeopardize your neighbour instead? Particularly at your own expense?
But when a corporation exempted by law from all scrutiny and candour refuses to prove that they are putting you at risk AND violating your privacy, and then makes grandiose statements about how it intends to “allow” you to pay out of your own pocket to protect yourself from their actions on your property? This pretty much says it all.
#2 by Diane Black on July 11, 2011 - 11:21 am
Mia said:
‘And lest we forget? There are the “other” smart meters, the collector meters, to be placed on the most unsuspecting homes, the ones which are even more powerful and which are there to collect info from about 100o neighbouring meters and then beam it up to the satellite. .
Hydro could forget the booster systems and hard wire the meters as done in Ontario and the eastern US.
But they won’t.’
BC Hydro put a new meter on my home around Feb. of this year. Could I be one of the unsuspecting homes. How will I know? Our city of Surrey is scheduled to be receiving smart meters as I type this.
#3 by admin on July 11, 2011 - 12:23 pm
Daine, please review your meter then look at this page https://emrabc.ca/?page_id=3090 which will help you determine what meter you have.
#4 by Mia Nony on July 12, 2011 - 2:18 am
Despite the corporate deception of July as the so called “deployment” start date (this military language of Hydro’s is very telling for the mind set behind this), they have been at this for some time.
I had some electrical work done back in the beginning of April. At that time the electrician’s assistant mentioned back then that he personally has been separately hired to install wireless smart meters en mass in Victoria and had been doing so for months now. He revealed that policy for this was that he was not hired to do houses yet. He was hired to start deployment with condos and apartment buildings, anywhere where people are not aware, have no yard, have no windows to see the meter guy approach them, unlike with in single family homes or detached dwellings. So clearly stage one is to tackle the easy targets unlikely to note switch over activity or unable to notice or even to know where their meter is located, be it out back or round the side of the buildings in a bank of other meters.
His boss, the main electrician for the work they were doing, had only just lost all of his UPS units and had his circuit boards ruined and equipment was all fried in one 2+ hour period in March when they installed smart meters in his Victoria commercial office area.
He approached Hydro for compensation and they immediately claimed NO responsibility for any of this.
And his business insurance would not pay him a dime either, since regardless of the type of harm these meters do, to humans or to electronics, all damage caused by smart meters is not covered by any kind of insurance for any harm of any sort. Smart meters are uninsurable for fire, damage, health harm.
Insurance corporations make it their business to know what will cost them and they exclude anything high risk. So does extended medical insurance. These corporations understand one another and insurance ones clearly already know what we are only now learning, just how lethal these meters are.
The non smart but also non analog digital model which your site link refers to is already in place on more than a few recreational owner absentee properties on some Gulf Islands. Aren’t these simply first generation digital meter installations for interim upgrades to tide Hydro over until mass deployment of wireless ones?
My understanding until now was that the 2 million+ Itron Smart Meters purchased for mass deployment by B.C. Hydro are “convertible” and are able to be made either wired or wireless. Wrong?
Based on that understanding I has assumed that any interim digital meters were just that, interim. that the non wireless digital meters are only temporary and that they will remove what you explain is the “non smart” or wired Itron Centron C1S and will replace these first generation digital ones with the “smart” or “wireless” Open Way at every property. Anyone able to confirm one way or the other?
#5 by MIke jackson on July 25, 2011 - 1:17 pm
BC Hydro keep saying these Smart Meters are safe but there is a lot of science that contradicts them. Not to mention the fact that BC Hydro has conducted no safety studies, certainly no safety studies of these Smart Meters in or near homes