Editor’s Note:
This chart above and text below are from attorneys Mike Aguirre and Mia Severson,
who’re representing low income ratepayers against Southern CA Edison’s
plan to demand $5 Billion from their customers for
their stupid mistakes with San Onofre nuclear power plant.
The CPUC colluded with Southern California Edison (SCE) in this. This case has much of the same
pattern as with the CPUC and ‘smart’ meters, as well as with PG&E and Diablo
Canyon, the remaining nuclear power plant in CA – our own potential Fukushima.
Mary Beth Brangan
What Is A Cover-Up
A cover-up is an attempt to conceal evidence of wrongdoing. In a passive cover-up information is simply not provided; in an active cover-up deception is used.
The expression is usually applied to people in positions of authority who abuse their power to deflect guilt of wrongdoing. Those who initiate a cover up (or their allies) may be responsible for a crime.
While the terms are often used interchangeably, cover-up involves withholding incriminatory evidence, while whitewash involves releasing misleading evidence. https://self.gutenberg.org/articles/cover-up
Are Those Listed Above Engaged in a $5.2 Million cover-up of an unlawful scheme to Make Edison customers to pay $5B for closed San Onofre plant? Are they getting help from the Governor’s office? Who is Nancy McFadden?
Who is Nancy McFadden?
Nancy McFadden was the Senior Vice President and Senior Advisor to the Chairman and CEO of PG&E Corporation, and before that was the Senior Vice President of Public Affairs for PG&E Corporation and Pacific Gas and Electric Company. She received $1 million from PG&E before joining Brown’s staff. She now serves as the Executive Secretary to California Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. [ see: Indispensable insider looks out for Gov. Jerry Brown’s interests – “Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s chief aide was Susan Kennedy, so influential that many viewed her as the de facto governor. Nobody says that about McFadden, a lawyer who is more broker than coach for a governor with decades of policy experience.” ]
Nancy McFadden is the longest-serving loyalist in Brown's inner circle. Photo:Robert Durell LA Times
On February 12, 2015, summoned by gold-embossed invitations, members of the ruling energy elite gathered in the glittering splendor of the Julia Morgan Ballroom – one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s posh venues – to honor one of their own and show their solidarity with him in his current travails.
That would be Michael Peevey (left), who recently stepped down from the Presidency of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) after a 12-year reign amid a barrage of investigations and revelations about backroom dealing between him, his colleagues and staff, and the utility officials they were supposed to be regulating.
At the time of the gala in the grandeur of the JMB, Peevey’s home had been recently raided by state and Federal law enforcement agents intent on seizing evidence for their ongoing investigations. A trove of 65,000 e-mails just released by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) detailing the interactions of utility and Commission personnel was already revealing alarming, plot-thickening evidence.
At issue were so-called ex parte communications between utility executives and CPUC officials conducted in private out of public view and process. Such interactions are supposed to be reported in writing to the CPUC proceeding participants, as “ex-parte” meetings. Apparently, under Peevey, there were a lot that were not.
The ornate Julia Morgan Ballroom was the venue for $250-a-plate Peevey gala with proceeds going to the UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Business.
Peevey Ex Parte Party Poopers
So, not everyone at the entrance to the JMB that night was there to celebrate Mr. Peevey’s legacy. Slightly outnumbering the team of security men were protesters holding a news conference at the door as the celebrants entered. (Full disclosure, EON both documented and participated. Scroll down for video reports and media links).
MC-ing the conference, covered by media from radio, print and TV, was Ray Lutz of the San Diego-based CitizensOversight.org, who had set up a podium and sound system and articulated his many concerns with the way Peevey’s PUC did business.
EON photo
“CPUC now a rogue agency” – Former CPUC President Joins Protestors, Speaks Out
Most prominent among the speakers was former CPUC President, Loretta Lynch, Peevey’s predecessor, who minced no words in denouncing the corporate capture of the CPUC under Peevey and labeling the evening’s gala as “one big ex parte meeting” behind closed doors.
For a former Commission President to show up and speak out publicly on behalf of rate-payers at the event underlined the seriousness of the current CPUC situation and the urgent need for focused public attention and action.
EON photo
Citing the progressive purposes that led almost a century ago to the founding of the CPUC by then Gov. Hiram Johnson in response to public outrage at the corporate crimes of the time, former CPUC President Lynch called for today’s Californians to rise up and demand substantive reforms in the now-compromised and discredited Commission, whose mandate is protection of the public good, not corporate profits. See her recent Chronicle Op-Ed piece : Guidelines for the post-Peevey era of the CPUC
EON photo
Who Pays for the ‘Smart Meter’ Fiasco?
Mary Beth Brangan of EON, an official intervenor at the CPUC on behalf of the public’s interests in the ‘smart meter’ forced deployment controversy, is part of a coalition of citizen groups which oppose that deployment as a threat to human health and safety, privacy, grid security and democratic choice. Over 57 cities, counties and one tribe joined in various forms of opposition to the forced installation of ‘smart’ meters. That strong coalition was infiltrated, spied on and labeled ‘insurgents’ by PG&E management.
The CPUC, now revealed by the released emails to have been part of that behind-the-scenes blocking of action to remedy the extremely real ratepayer concerns and injuries, ordered a charade of an investigation, and PG&E was ultimately forced to pay a small fine to the state’s general fund. The CPUC hid its complicity at the time but that is now being thoroughly revealed through the released emails.
EON joins many others in saying the patterns of practice revealed by the e-mail record and the cloud of corruption surrounding Peevey’s departure from the Commission throw the legitimacy and legality of all the proceedings and decisions made under his administration into doubt.
EON has filed for a rehearing of the recent CPUC ‘smart’ meter opt-out decision which forces customers to pay an extortionate fee not to have electro-toxic, privacy-violating wireless transmitters attached to their residences. Furthermore we believe the current decision is unjust and illegal in its attempts to strip municipal and county elected officials of their constitutionally mandated power and responsibilities to protect the safety and privacy of their constituents. It actually asserts that utilities’ rights trump locally elected officials in regard to municipal franchise agreements that are used to regulate utilities’ activities in local jurisdictions.
At the press conference, Brangan pointed out the parallel methods used by the CPUC in both the San Onofre proceeding to determine who pays for So Cal Edison’s costly mistakes and mismanagement and the ‘smart’ meter proceeding that determined who should bear the cost of opting out of harmful and dangerous ‘smart’ meters. She emphasized the need for true regulator protection for ratepayers against the powerful utilities.
EON photo
Who Pays for San Onofre?
San Diego attorney Mike Aguirre and his law partner Maria Severson added their pressure and litigation to that of the city of San Bruno’s that led to the revealing release of the 65,000 e-mails. Aguirre and Severson recently published a report detailing their findings of “Malfeasance and Institutional Corruption at the California Public Utilities Commission.” [ pdf here ] ( Scroll down for our interviews with Severson and Aguirre )
Aguirre called for an investigation into why the CPUC under Peevey ruled that ratepayers must pay $3.5 billion for electricity they will never get from Southern California Edison’s San Onofre nuclear power plant, which has been permanently shut down because of faulty and illegal decisions made by the utility’s management.
However, even though San Onofte nuclear reactors are shut down, the plant must continue to store thousands of metric tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste, currently stored in thin steel containers that the NRC says may crack from the marine environment. [ For more information on this vital issue – how to manage hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive waste that is deadly for longer than human civilization has yet existed, now kept on-site at over 100 nuclear plants around the country with no ecologically safe facilities to go to – visit Donna Gilmore’s excellent website: SanOnofreSafety.org ]
EON photo
Who Will Defend Diablo Whistleblowers?
Steve Zeltzer of the Labor Project called for protection of whistleblowing workers. He pointed out that both PG&E and Southern California Edison fired and retaliated against workers who tried to address serious safety issues. If workers concerned about what they see endangering the public can’t speak out and get results, we all suffer. The real results are the deaths, injuries and devastation in San Bruno, as well as the San Onofre radiation leaks and thousands of injuries and many fires from ‘smart’ meters.
He demanded that not only CPUC officials but colluding PG&E and So Cal Edison executives be indicted and prosecuted for their criminal acts that resulted in deaths and injuries and the highest electricity rates in the country.
Video Reports and Media Links are below:
Protesting Peevey’s (ex parte) Party
On February 12, 2015, dozens of the closest elite friends of out-going CPUC President Michael Peevey’s paid $250 per plate to gather at the posh Julia Morgan Ballroom in downtown San Francisco in celebration of Mr. Peevey’s ‘lifetime accomplishments.’
Greeting them at the door were protestors – including Loretta Lynch, his predecessor as Commission President. They came not to celebrate, but to condemn and expose the culture of corruption Peevey’s 12 year reign has left behind.
Speakers include former California Public Utilities Commission President Loretta Lynch; Ray Lutz of CitizenOversight.org; EON’s Mary Beth Brangan; Steve Zeltzer of the Labor Video Project; and San Diego attorney Mike Aguirre.
Viewer Embed Code:
From CBS Channel 5: San Francisco Dinner Honoring Ex-CPUC Exec Accused Of Shady Dealings Met With Protests
From NBC – Jul 31, 2013 Flown, Wined and Dined on Lobbyists’ Dimes?
CPUC president accepted $165,000 in free travel from nonprofits and special interests in past six years
EON Skype Interview Busting CPUC Backroom Deals – Maria Severson
In this Skype interview, San Diego attorney Maria Severson talks about the implications of revelations from PG&E’s trove of 65,000 e-mail exchanges between its executives and California Public Utilities Commission officials, including former CPUC President Peevey.
(We regret that the audio and video quality in this interview conducted via Skype is not up to our usual standards. But we believe the content is important to make public.)
EON Video Who Pays for San Onofre? – Mike Aguirre
Attorney Mike Aguirre and his law partner Maria Severson are at the center of the emerging revelations about CPUC officials’ too cozy relationships with the officials of the utilities they are supposed to regulate. In this May 2014 interview Aguirre explains the key issues in this now-expanding case. He tells how his attempts to question then CPUC President Peevey provoked an outburst that may have marked the beginning of Peevey’s current troubles.
Related Media Links
UT-San Diego Flawed San Onofre project steamed on
$680 million replacement generators were not subject to formal cost study
By Jeff McDonald9:03 a.m.Feb. 14, 2015Updated4:18 p.m.
…It was a bombshell disclosure by any measure: the top utility regulator in California sketching out a multibillion-dollar deal with the senior Edison lawyer in secret at a luxury hotel in Warsaw, Poland…. Pickett, whose house is walking distance from Peevey’s home in the La Canada Flintridge section of Los Angeles, jotted down the potential points of agreement, which Peevey kept.
UT-San Diego Senator blasts Cal over Peevey party
The school will receive proceeds from celebration of outgoing utilities chief
By Jeff McDonald4:22 p.m.Feb. 12, 2015
Dan Walters Daily: Michael Peevey tribute is improper
Published on Feb 10, 2015
Despite revelations of questionable professional conduct, California’s political elite will gather this week to honor former Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey, Dan says. (February 11, 2015)
SFBG This Week The secret life of Michael Peevey
California’s top energy regulator rolls with power company executives behind the scenes
05.24.11 – 3:25 pm | Rebecca Bowe |
TURN The Secret Life of Michael Peevey
TURN objects to fox guarding the hen house. CPUC President Peevey is too cozy with the utility companies he regulates.
Teams of researchers are indexing, archiving and examining the recently released trove of 120,000+ PG&E/CPUC e-mail exchanges. Attorneys are pressing for release of more e-mail exchanges with Southern California Edison (SCE). Watch this space for reporting on more revelations as they emerge.
===========
If you like EON’s work, you can support it, whatever your budget level, here.
Sandi Maurer of EMF Safety Network addresses a people's press conference on the CPUC's 'smart meter' opt-out decision, MC-ed by EON's Mary Beth Brangan, Dec. 18, 2014. EON photo
Technocratic Tyranny and Corruption Trump Democratic Choice
His supporters say he’s right up there with Muhammad Ali & the Pope.
Victims of his ‘smart meter’ opt-out decision want him in jail.
By James Heddle
EON – The Ecological Options Network
Merry Christmas…You, the People!
The December 18, 2014 going-away party ending Michael Peevey’s 12-year tenure as President of the California Public Utilities Commission was quite a show. A parade of over 30 of his closest, most sycophantic friends had signed up to begin the routine ‘public comment period’ by giving lengthy speeches celebrating Peevey’s alleged accomplishments and virtues.
One former fellow Commissioner, in the sermonic tones of a revivalist preacher, compared him to Muhammed Ali and the Pope.
Peveey’s daughter had hired a videographer to make a record of the celebration that she planned give her father for a Christmas present. Her camera got an exclusive down-in-front position. The rest of the camera people were confined to the back of the room. No Time Limit on Adulation
Up on the dais, presiding President Peevey appeared humbly unmoved by the encomiums being showered upon him by the adoring courtiers thus assembled. But it was noticed by those of us who had attempted to present testimonies in many previous public comment periods that the President did not impose on his friends the same 1-3 minute time limits we were used to his rigidly enforcing on us.
To be voted on by the Commissioners that day was a decision as to whether people could opt-out of having wireless, electro-magnetic pulse-emitting so-called ‘smart meters’ installed on their homes. The mass, forced installation of such meters had been Peevey’s Pet Project for years. It was billed as the infrastructure to enable creation of a wireless ‘smart energy grid,’ which was being sold by corporations world-wide as ‘a solution to climate change.’ In practice, the scheme is turning out to be a total crock. (To find out why, go to GettingSmarterAboutTheSmartGrid.org ) All this risk yet studies by various attorneys general, including Illinois and the auditor-general of Ontario, Canada’s legislature, have shown these meters result in little to no energy savings and no benefits to ratepayers. Instead, rates have gone up.
The super-hubristic, techno-utopian (money-making) vision calls for a global ‘Internet Of Things (IOT)’ – a whole new generation of wireless, ‘smart’ appliances (that everyone will have to buy) in constant mutual communication. Not only will you be able to talk to your air conditioner or your refrigerator from the road on your cell phone, but they will talk back to you, relaying commands for minute-to-minute energy consumption limits from your local Big ‘Green’ Brother utility.
In the process, you and your family members and your neighborhood and the rest of the world’s population would be bathed 24/7 in a constant shower of electro-magnetic pollution inimical to human health and happiness.
These guys are really crazy.
Josh Hart of StopSmartMeters.org speaks at the people's press conference on the CPUC's 'smart meter' opt-out decision, Dec. 18, 2014. EON photo
West Marin – a Cradle of the ‘Smart’ Meter ‘Insurrection’
Public opposition to the forced ‘smart meter’ build-out began in Sonoma and Marin Counties and spread. EON is proud to have organized the first public meeting on the issue at the Pt. Reyes Dance Palace. West Marin communities fought for and got an installation moratorium. West Marin residents, to the delight of national media, were famously arrested for blocking installation trucks. Stop the ‘smart meters’ is now a national and international movement.
But on Dec. 18th, the Commission was poised to give Peevey another Christmas-cum-going-away present better than his daughter’s video. They were apparently going to make Peevey’s Pet Project a fixture of post-Peevey California life.
According to the proposed decision: Individual home residents would be allowed to opt-out for an initial fee and on-going monthly payments that would terminate after three years. But residents of clustered housing units, private businesses and the elected governments of community municipalities would not be permitted to opt-out. Peevey’s rules.
Playing in a Rigged Game – ‘Exhausting our remedies.’
The CPUC’s decision-making process, called a ‘proceeding,’ had stretched, with many delays and bureaucratic convolutions, over more than three years.
As official ‘intervenors’ in that Proceeding, our organization, EON, the Ecological Options Network, had worked with other intervenor groups like the EMF Safety Network in an attempt to defend the general public’s interest vis a vis the profit-driven interests of investor owned utilities (aptly called IOU’s for short) like PG&E and Southern California Edison (SCE).
Our involvement had been an eye-opening one. We slowly came to realize that we were playing in a rigged game – one in which cozy cronyism and corrupt collusion between Commissioners and their staff with IOU executives against the public interest was – and continues to be – the norm .
We were labeled ‘insurgents’. We were infiltrated and spied upon by PG&E agents using assumed names. The IOU was eventually fined for its spying activities, but the paltry amount went to the state general fund, not to the targeted, victimized groups, i.e., we ‘insurgents.’ In a technocracy, dissent is treason.
Steve Zeltzer of the Labor Project tells President Peevey he should be in jail in this frame from the CPUC's in-house video. Mr. Peevey urged Zeltzer to 'be more polite.'
Key Issues Ignored
None of the valid issues repeatedly raised by us intervenors in the Proceeding – well-documented damaging human health effects, fire safety, violations of privacy and informed democratic choice, cyber-hackability and energy grid security – were ever considered. They were constantly promised to be taken up later, but never were.
Meanwhile, PG&E was slapped with over 30 Federal indictments for its negligence and corruption in the San Bruno gas explosion disaster . A follow-up investigation turned up a trove of e-mails documenting corrupt, lovy-dovy collusion between utility executives and Commissioners and staff…including Peevey. Business as usual at the good ol’ PUC.
The opt-out decision violated a number of points of law, which will be contested both in the CPUC process, and in the courts, as we intervenors ‘exhaust our remedies’ by continuing to protest in the flawed CPUC Proceeding process, thus maintaining our legal ‘standing’ as aggrieved parties entitled to eventually ‘sue the bastards. ‘
Protestors hold signs with the names of 'smart meter' health victims in this frame from the CPUC's in-house video.
The Opt-Out Decision = Extortion
Pay us and we won’t break your kneecaps. Pay us and we won’t install an electro-toxic devise on your home. Mafia goons, or CPUC technocrats, a shakedown is a shakedown, is a shakedown.
In practice, the decision means that the few individual residents that can afford to pay to keep their non-wireless, analogue meters will be lonely islands in a sea of electromagnetic radiation emitted by their neighbors’ wireless meters all communicating wirelessly with each other 24/7/365.
Local elected authorities will be blocked from exercising their statutory mandate to protect the health, safety, privacy and security of their constituents. The increasing numbers of ‘electro-sensitive’ people being made sick and driven from their homes and work places by the growing ‘soup’ of electro-magnetic pollution will have no place to run to.
So, under a toxic cloud of corruption, celebrated by sycophants and cronies, Michael Peevey bowed out in a synthetic cloud of glory. But not before opponents of the ‘smart meter’ opt-out movement had our say.
We held a press conference on the CPUC steps before the meeting. After the orchestrated love fest in the ‘public comment’ period, protestors insisted on reading the names and quoting the testimonies of the many victims of wireless ‘smart meter’ health effects who have been forced to become EMF refugees. The demonstrators called for Peevey’s criminal prosecution. They promised to continue their legal battles and public information campaigns.
After reluctantly listening, the unelected Commissioners broke for lunch – which Peevey insisted was their ‘right’ – then unanimously approved Peevey’s Pet Project.
‘We have not yet begun to fight!’
That’s not the end of the story. As informed public opposition to ‘smart meters’ continues to grow nation- and, indeed, world-wide, and as the claimed selling points for the SM built-out continue to be proven egregiously false, our fight to reverse the CPUC’s ill-considered decision will continue and eventually prevail. Meanwhile, ‘smart meter’ installer trucks will be invading West Marin and other communities soon and coming to a house near you…maybe your own. Find out how to opt-out, get informed on this important issue, share information with your neighbors, and join our movement.
Help roll back the roll-out.
Marin County Sheriff's Deputies arrest Katharina Sandizell-Smith (left) and Kristin McCrory (right) for blocking 'smart' meter installation trucks in Inverness Park, California, Wednesday, December 29, 2010. Photo: Courtesy of Scotts Valley Neighbors Against Smart Meters
The CPUC’s Flawed ‘Smart Meter’ Ruling will not stop the Drive for Community Wide, No Cost Opt-Outs.
Public Resistance to Wireless Pollution
Almost exactly four years ago, June McCrory and Katharina Sandizell-Smith, two young West Marin mothers, made national news by blocking the Inverness road to ‘smart’ meter installers and becoming among the first in the U.S. to be arrested over the meters. Their arrests shocked many in the industry into realizing that all was not well with their plans.
After an unprecedented multi year delay, a final decision on this contentious issue will be voted on by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Dec. 18, 2014.
Those of us in West Marin and Fairfax became leaders in the fight against forced installation of so-called ‘smart’ meters. We joined leaders in Sebastopol and Scotts Valley and then beyond in vociferously resisting because of health, safety, security and privacy concerns which we testified about at Marin city council meetings.
Fairfax City Council’s resolution asserting the right of communities to opt out helped kick off what eventually became 57 cities, counties and one tribe to officially object. Many called for moratoriums on installation; over a dozen made installation illegal.
Beginning early in 2010, we brought our concerns about so-called ‘smart’ meters to the attention of folks here in West Marin at a packed meeting at the Dance Palace.
PG&E Agents Lied and Spied, Labeled Us ‘Insurgents’
Our Marin County based online group, SmartWarriorMarin, initially the most active, was infiltrated by PG&E workers using false names. Later, when PG&E’s ‘smart’ meter project director, William Devereaux, tried to infiltrate the EMFSafety Coalition’s online group with a false name, Ralph, he neglected to remove his real name from his email and was recognized. Shortly thereafter, PG&E released hundreds of emails to the media that it had purloined from our group strategy discussions. In e-mail exchanges between executives, opponents of ‘smart’ meters were referred to as ‘insurgents.’ Subsequently the CPUC ordered an investigation into the PG&E spying and PG&E was eventually forced to pay a $390,000 fine to the CA general fund as well as to institute a code of ethics for similar online situations.
We had wondered when we organized to be at the Santa Rosa truck yard at 7:30 am one chilly morning in 2010 to block the ‘smart’ meter installation trucks, how the trucks had completely vanished! The company had gotten the message from our email discussion and had moved them before we came.
Massive Public Testimony
For years, hundreds of people spoke out at the bi-weekly CPUC business meetings in San Francisco. PG&E and CPUC President Michael Peevey were getting nervous. People related similar heart-wrenching stories of being totally physically devastated by the effects of the ‘smart’ meter’s incessant pulsing microwaves. Many people close to banks of multiple meters in apartment buildings or condominiums, were especially injured. Finally after sitting through many hundreds of such testimonies, President Peevey declared that an opt out would be offered and established an official CPUC proceeding to work out the details.
Playing in a Rigged Game
After producing dozens of videos, writing articles, researching and writing blogs, organizing events and giving presentations, chasing installer trucks out of Bolinas and blocking trucks with friends in Stinson Beach, testifying at and videotaping CPUC meetings, my partner and EON co-director, Jim and I became legal intervenors on behalf of the public at the CPUC proceeding. We argued for community wide opt out as well as for no cost opt out. After all, we never opted in – why should we be forced to pay to not have something? Doesn’t being forced to pay to not be harmed constitute extortion?
Once the official proceeding began, those of us who were now embroiled in the Byzantine CPUC rules no longer showed up at the regular business meetings and the hubbub somewhat quieted. Peevey boasted at a CPUC meeting that he was praised “by the Whitehouse” for effectively dealing with the activists. (Federal stimulus funds were behind the rollout.) It was true, the furor died down, with the energy being dissipated by legal maneuvers.
Nevertheless, we all continued on.
We here in Marin, together with our colleagues in Sebastopol and Santa Cruz, gathered the critical information damning the ‘smart’ meter technology and set a tone that has reverberated throughout the world. Pushback against microwave emitting meters is now happening everywhere throughout the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe.
Medical, Cyber-Security and Safety Warnings Ignored
After repeated thorough investigations, our fears about the techno plan were validated again and again. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Cancer Research, IARC, concluded that microwaves in the frequencies used by wireless devices, including ‘smart’ meters, are a class 2 B , possible carcinogen, as is asbestos, arsenic and benzene. (If the peer-reviewed studies that weren’t allowed to be considered by IARC had been included, many independent scientists believe that microwave frequencies should be classified as a class 1 A carcinogen.) Can you think of another instance where it is legal to force a class 2 B carcinogen device onto your home?
The American Academy of Environmental Medicine issued a letter directly to the CPUC calling for an immediate moratorium on installation of the meters, citing many peer-reviewed studies showing biological effects from pulsing microwave frequencies.
Security experts constantly warn of dramatically increased vulnerability to the electrical grid by cyber attacks because of wireless ‘smart’ meters. James Woolsey, former head of the CIA has said that the wireless ‘smart’ meter technologies make the grid stupid.
Thousands of fires have been reported and at least one California and one Nevada death caused by the meter fires. These have been dealt with by utility out of court settlements with gag orders. Canadian Saskatchewan utility CEO Robert Watson resigned in disgrace because of having to recall all meters due to a rash of fires. Plus now utilities are profiting from selling individual ratepayers’ private data gathered by meters.
All this risk and yet studies by various attorneys general, including Illinois and the auditor-general of Ontario, Canada’s legislature, have shown these meters result in little to no energy savings and no benefits to ratepayers. Instead, rates have gone up.
Since the meters continuously bounce thousands of powerful microwave emissions between neighboring meters 24/7, (signals can travel 1 mile) an individual opt out doesn’t remove the harmful emissions. Multiple banks of meters on apartments and condominiums produce really lethal amounts of radiation; therefore, community wide opt out is the only solution.
Though stating in the ‘smart’ grid proceeding that health issues would be addressed in the opt-out proceeding, Peevey and the CPUC Judge did not allow any health information to be submitted at all. They then claimed that since we had not presented any convincing data they determined there were no health effects!
Peevey says, “Community-wide opt-outs are ‘undemocratic!’”
Unfortunately, at the Dec. 4 CPUC meeting, the Commissioners discussed the proposed decisions and decided against allowing communities to opt out and to require those refusing a ‘smart’ meter to pay for the privilege of not having one. Mr. Peevey actually ridiculed as ‘undemocratic’ communities that voted for community wide opt out.
Though it will still be possible to opt out, you will have to pay a $75 fee upfront and then $10 extra per month; low income CARE ratepayers pay $10 upfront and $5 per month, pricing it out of range for many poor people.
Come and Express Your Outrage…
We encourage everyone outraged at this injustice and willful ignoring of people pleading on behalf of their health, safety, security and privacy to be at the December 18 meeting to demand community opt out and no fees. 8:30 AM, California Public Utilities Commission, Van Ness at McAllister, San Francisco.
We may have lost this round, but this patently illegal affront to people’s right to health and safety and to the right of elected officials of cities and counties to protect their constituents, will be challenged in court. [ Download a PDF copy of this article here. ]
==================
Mary Beth Brangan and Jim Heddle are Co-Directors of EON, the Ecological Options Network. They are award-winning film-makers of Public Exposure: DNA, Democracy and the Wireless Revolution and many other social & environmental issue documentaries produced in the last two decades which have been broadcast and toured nationally and internationally; aired in Congress, the United Nations, on PBS, ABC, CNN, cable; and used in parliaments, universities, libraries and by citizens’ organizations and NGO’s worldwide. Residents of Bolinas, they organize, educate and produce media supporting people confronting current survival challenges. www.eon3.net; YouTube.com/eon3; EON3emfblog.net
===========
If you like EON’s work, you can support it, whatever your budget level, here.
What the CPUC's Opt-Out Decision Ignores. Cartoon: J Heddle - EON
By James Heddle
Not Listening
Four years of informed, angry, pleading public testimony on a virtually bi-weekly basis telling them of the personal health, public safety, privacy violation and national cyber- and energy-security threats posed by the forced saturation deployment of wireless so-called ‘smart’ meters failed to persuade the five unelected, political appointees that perch on the dais at the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC).
None of these urgent public health, safety, privacy, and security concerns have been considered in the Commission ‘Proceeding’ dealing with the question of whether-or-not individuals, apartment complexes, communities and municipalities could choose to ‘opt-out’ of the coordinated government/industry wireless ‘smart’ meter roll-out push being simultaneously implemented in many countries around the world.
On Thursday, Dec. 18th, the Commissioners are expected to vote for a decision stunningly symptomatic of the current state of democratic public process in America: Screw the Public Will. Discounting all legitimate public concerns, the ruling will allow individual households to ‘opt-out’ for an initial penalty fee and an extortionate monthly payment.
But no collective opt-outs will be allowed – meaning all neighborhoods will be drenched 24/7 in inescapable electro-magnetic soup. No place to hide.
So much for democratic process and ‘consumer choice.’ So much for health, safety, privacy and security.
Down from Davos
The whole corporately-driven wireless ‘smart’ meter roll-out craze on the part of gas, power and water utilities world-wide can be traced back to the government-corporate conclave known as the World Economic Forum which meets annually in the swank Swiss resort town of Davos.
Conceived in the conference rooms, cocktail lounges and dining halls of snowy Davos and codified into technical papers, budget spread sheets, strategic planning documents and public relations scenarios by corporate and government staffers, the scheme was sold to gullible officials and publics as a necessary response to climate change.
The global ‘smart’ meter roll-out – just a step toward the ultimately envisioned ‘internet of things’ in which a whole new generation of ‘smart’ wireless appliances from juicers to air conditioners to vibrators will communicate with each other in a kind of automated global brain – would give consumers more awareness of and control over their energy usage and allow the integration of ‘intermittent’ renewable energy sources like wind and solar into the national energy grid. That’s how the sales-pitch went. None if it has proven true.
But Obama Administration bought the hype, drank the ‘smart grid’ cool aid and shoveled billions of big federal bucks into the pipeline to support it.
Here in California, CPUC President Michael Peevey slurped the smart meter cool aid and made it his business to impose ‘smart meter madness’ on the entire population of California.
That’s how it comes to pass that next Thurs. – as Mike Peevey ends his CPUC career and rides off under a lowering cloud of corruption investigations – the Commission will mark his passing by voting into place his legacy – an essentially criminal act which will put at risk the health, privacy, safety and security of the state’s entire population. Hellofa job, Mike!
Please join many other outraged ratepayers and public citizens at the CPUC 8:30 AM, next Thursday 505 Van Ness Avenue and let the Commissioners know that this illegitimate decision defying the public will cannot stand. It is the end of a flawed CPUC Proceeding, but only the beginning of public opposition that will ultimately roll back what will come to be seen as one of the most harebrained and disastrous technocratic decisions in the history of California. [ Download PDF version here. ]
James Heddle co-directs EON – The Ecological Options Network. EON has been an official intervenor in the CPUC Opt-Out Proceeding. Eon3EMFblog.net On FaceBook: EON – the Ecological Options Network On Twitter: EonNewsNet
For more: EMFsafetyNetwork.org StopSmartMeters.org
===========
If you like EON’s work, you can support it, whatever your budget level, here.
