{"id":8440,"date":"2012-05-10T03:09:08","date_gmt":"2012-05-10T10:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/?p=8440"},"modified":"2016-09-28T03:12:23","modified_gmt":"2016-09-28T10:12:23","slug":"squamish-local-vows-to-fight-bc-hydro-over-smart-meters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/?p=8440","title":{"rendered":"Squamish : Local Vows to Fight BC Hydro over Smart Meters"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cBC Hydro has no right to come to my property, and if they do, I will take them to court,\u201d said Ferdinand Vondruska. (Shaw TV photo)<\/p>\n

By Gagandeep Ghuman<\/strong>
\nPublished: May 5, 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

When BC Hydro engineers come to install smart meters at the Paradise Valley home of Ferdinand Vondruska, they shouldn\u2019t expect a warm welcome.<\/p>\n

What they should expect is regular metres wrapped in a protective metal, and an unapologetic Vondruska, who is even willing to take BC Hydro to court.<\/p>\n

\u201cBC Hydro has no right to come to my property, and if they do, I will take them to court,\u201d Vondruska, who owns a 20-acre property in Paradise Valley, said.<\/p>\n

BC Hydro has started installing smart meters in Squamish and the Sea to Sky Corridor, said Cindy Verschoor, a BC Hydro spokesperson.<\/p>\n

She said installations started a few weeks ago in the region. More than 1,000 meters have been installed, while there are 24,000 that are waiting to be installed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been talking to consumers about smart meters for about three years now, and we go with advanced notice,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Vondruska is one of several British Columbians who resist smart meters fearing the exposure to the radio frequency will have health consequences.<\/p>\n

Vondruska runs the\u00a0C-Dar Lodge Farm<\/a>, a biodynamic demonstration farm that has two homes, one lodge, and eight analog meters to service them all.<\/p>\n

Vondruska said he does \u201chighly sensitive\u201d research on soil revitalisation, samples of which are taken to the\u00a0University of Colima<\/a>\u00a0in Mexico to help with soil fertility in that country.<\/p>\n

Vondruska fears the electric impulse from the smart meter will meddle with the soil samples.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like poking someone with the needle, the soil life will die and the enzymes won\u2019t grow,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Fear of radiation by\u00a0BC Hydro<\/a>\u00a0meters is completely unfounded, said Verschoor.<\/p>\n

They have been considered safe by every local, provincial, or federal agency that has examined them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you stood in front of smart meters for 20-years, it would be the equivalent of the radio frequency of a 30-minute cell phone call,\u201d she said.<\/strong><\/p>\n

She also said smart meters have some of the world\u2019s strictest radio frequency regulations.<\/p>\n

Switzerland has a precautionary limit of 4.5 \u03bcW\/cm2 for highly sensitive areas like schools and hospitals. Smart meter signals at the same distance are less than 2 \u03bcW\/cm2, she added.<\/p>\n

She said about 99 per cent of the population is willing to have the meters installed, but there is the one per cent that resists.<\/p>\n

BC Hydro won\u2019t force customers to accept it, but will try to dissipate their misgivings about it.<\/p>\n

Those who resist, however, increase the cost of service for others, which is inevitably transferred to those who have accepted the meters, the spokesperson added.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.squamishreporter.com\/2012\/05\/05\/local-vows-to-fight-bc-hydro-over-smart-meters\/#.V-uWq-md6Zw<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cBC Hydro has no right to come to my property, and if they do, I will take them to court,\u201d said Ferdinand Vondruska. (Shaw TV photo) By Gagandeep Ghuman Published: May 5, 2012 When BC Hydro engineers come to install smart meters at the Paradise Valley home of Ferdinand Vondruska, they shouldn\u2019t expect a warm […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,17,103,110,18,331],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bchydro","category-bc","category-canada","category-cindy-verschoor","category-smart-meter","category-squamish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8441,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8440\/revisions\/8441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}