1) Clarification on previous article. A few days ago I included a suggestion from a member about an important issue that should be presented as a requirement for considering a transmitter-off $$meter. It said:
I’d send an email to BCH CEO Jessica McDonald (jessica.macdonald@bchydro.com), with a copy to whoever sent you the notice and the BCUC ( commission.secretary@bcuc.com ) as a minimum, saying your meter base (which is owned by you and 100% your responsibility) isn’t CSA certified for combustible electronic meters (a true statement . . . combustible meters weren’t even invented when your meter base was certified safe by CSA ) and that you will accept a combustible electronic meter only upon receipt of a letter signed by a BC Hydro professional engineer saying that doing so is a safe practice and that, should any fire damage occur as a result, BC Hydro will assume full responsibility. That should at least buy you a bit of time and/or a new analog meter . . . time enough, hopefully, for the BCUC to complete the safety study it’s presently engaged in (at long last), come to the conclusion these things aren’t safe (or accurate or economic or long-lived or lots of other things) and ordering BCH to bring back analogs.
If you go this route, make sure in your email to say a written copy is in the mail and then make sure to send the written copy, most strongly for you by registered mail. That way you’re on (the legal) record and they’ll have no way of denying your requirements.
First, the email address for Jessica McDonald has a typo. It should be: Jessica.mcdonald@bchydro.com. Sorry, I should have caught this.
Second, one member misunderstood and thought this was saying the base belongs to BC Hydro. The “you” referenced is you, the reader. The meter base belongs to the homeowner while Hydro says the meter belongs to them. This is why BC Hydro has told its employees that any smeter incident will be caused by the meter base and will be the responsibility of the homeowner, not Hydro’s, to pay for repairs.
2) Is everyone aware that BC Hydro recently began to send monthly bills out online, eliminating paper bills unless you specifically request them? If you missed this notice, you could be missing your bill and Hydro could use that as an excuse to shut your power off, charge you for reconnection and force you to take a smeter as a condition for reconnection.
You can go to: www.bchydro.com & log into your account. Click on “Manage Account” & select “Account settings”. There you can check off that you want paper bills if you wish [“Bill format”]. You also can contact customer service at BC Hydro.
3) More studies show that prolonged exposure to microwave radiation, such as that from cell phones, cordless phones, Wi-Fi modems and smeters can result in serious health effects. 900Mhz is the frequency used by one of the $$meter’s transmitter, the one that send signals throughout the mesh grid to other homes and to BC Hydro’s and FortisBC’s collectors:
“The results of our study are evident that pulse-modulated RF emissions may act as an environmental stressor and cause oxidative and nitrogenic damage in lung, liver, testis and heart tissues. Oxidative stress is known to underlie many human diseases including atherosclerosis, heart failure, myocardial infarction, chronic liver and lung diseases, infertility, etc.”
And another study shows that exposure of both long- and short-term at 2.1 Ghz (close to the frequency used by Wi-Fi modems and the $$meter internal ZigBee chip), can cause cellular death in human breast tissue.
“In the present study, we investigated whether apoptotic activity of human breast fibroblast cells were changed or not when the cells were exposed to W-CDMA modulated MW radiation at a frequency of 2.1 GHz in both short and long exposure durations. The study displayed that modulated MW radiation induced apoptotic cell death in all exposure periods. Moreover, cell proliferation was inhibited.”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236977578
4) A member suggested I send out this article again for those new members who might not have seen this before. There are ways to protect you and your family from or reduce exposure to wireless radiation. 50+ important tips.
http://electromagnetichealth.org/electromagnetic-health-blog/50-tips/
5) Knoxville, Tennessee will be installing “smart” meters for all utilities over the next 4 years, saying that:
“The primary customer benefit of the advanced meters comes from the fact that they will no longer have to call us when the power is out,” Black said. “The meter will send a signal to us if there is a loss of power.”
In many places, like Ontario and California (and here in BC), outages are not reported consistently and reliably!! And this is the major benefit???
6) Below is an update from Norm Ryder about his hunger/thirst strike this week in front of the Legislature.
Letters:
From: X
Sent: March 16, 2016
Subject: Re: BC Hydro Meter Choices Program
Dear Jessica:
Thank you for your response. You wave the Tariff Act in the air as your basis to do what you do. How ever the Act was never designed to be used as a club upon the people. It was developed to control and give oversight through the BCUC to make sure that the utility provider not become exactly what you have become. A Totalitarian Authority that has no oversight except when it is convenient for your purposes. The fact that the government has subjugated the BCUC on more than one occasion and acted totally contrary to the intent of the Act with respect to the activities of hydro is no accident it is deliberate. So by your action you have for all purposes nullified the effect of the Act and the effect of BCUC to administer the same.
Because it has been proven by the actions of the government in bypassing the Act as to its intent and the function of the BCUC you have made both null and void without jurisdiction over these matters. Your actions are also totally Ultra Virus the Charter and my inalienable rights of life, liberty, security of person, the right to live in peace without threat, and other numerous infractions that have been stated in previous correspondence. I can only restate that you “SHALL NOT TRESPASS” upon the properties in question for your stated purposes.
I reserve ALL MY RIGHTS and these rights supersede any regulatory Act that is not used in its original intent and is contrary to natural law and The Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter.
If you continue in this vain, anyone who comes on to the properties in question can be done only by appointment as arrange by a mutually agreed to time and and full disclosure on your part as to the intended activity, its purpose, benefits, to be derived to the customer for your activity and full disclosure of the hazards and the full liability upon the utility for any fail resulting from your activity.
This is not negotiable.
X
___________________________________________________________________________
From: Norm Ryder
Sent: March 17, 2016
They don’t exactly make it easy to do a hunger strike at the leg – doubt anyone is surprised. What has surprised me is how little the lack of fluids has affected me.
A small amount of progress has been made and I will suspend the action until Monday. The leg will not be sitting for the next 2 weeks but my presence will still be felt. I believe some updates etc will be posted on the website associated with Citizens Forum http://thebridgenewsservice.com/ . A piece about near field radiation is already there as well as a piece about why Cell towers should be in no one’s back yard.
For those that are not aware of the association between WorkSafe and EMR. My injury was caused by a large dose of EMR in the near field – far exceeding SC6. So far WorkSafe has refused to acknowledge the amount of radiation I was exposed to – preferring to confuse the issue by using the wrong numeric value and not even the correct units to express power density. While my claim is of course important to me, the bigger issue is if a claim for injuries caused by exceeding SC6 by a wide margin can not be accepted then there is no chance for claims with less exposure.
While looking into the operation of WorkSafe I found the pattern of wrong diagnosis, refusal to deal with the facts and a whole host of issues where WorkSafe is clearly working against the best interests of the worker. Part of the action is for every worker in BC – no one should ever have to fight this hard or wait this long for a claim to be accepted – unfortunately for far too many this is a pattern and WorkSafe has to be stopped.
The third issue is an attempt to spread greater awareness about the dangers of radiation. Outside of any discussion around SC6 is the potential for spectacular peaks of radiation when close to the source – few meters are designed to measure areas close to the source and the measured power density should be increased by at least a factor of 4. For too long we have been attempting to have them deal with sub SC6 levels of intensity and gotten nowhere in terms of raising the issue of exposure. If we can get rooftop workers to recognise that transmitters must be turned off when accessing a roof, not only will we save lives we will also help raised an awareness of the dangers of radiation.
I have sent out notice of my actions to the media regularly – which they have ignored. I would like to ask every one to do two things to assist me in raising the matter further. Join me when possible at the legislature and even better if you have a sign re the WorkSafe issues. And the second thing is to do all you can to encourage the media to take an interest.
Part of my shift in plans is to be available by phone on Friday as much as possible and especially between 9-12. I will be sending a notice re my availability to the media but reminders from others may help them decide to contact me.
Norm Ryder
The highly dangerous and unpredictable zones around Cell Towers, Cell Phones other radiating devices
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAcqeYF_spU
___________________________________________________________________________
From: XX
Date: March 17, 2016
To: jessica.mcdonald@bchydro.com, commission.secretary@bcuc.com, smartmeters@bchydro.com
Cc: MEM.minister@gov.bc.ca, Adrian.Dix.MLA@leg.bc.ca
Dear Ms. McDonald, BCUC Commission Secretary, Bill Bennett, Adrian Dix,
I am concerned re inaccuracies being sent out by BC Hydro about their stock of ( lack of) legacy meters and about safety and other smart meters concerns. Many citizens who opted to retain their legacy analog meters in the Meters Choices Program, at considerable personal cost, are receiving letters trying to force them in to having a radio-off or regular smart meter with radio-on when certification of their reliable analog meter supposedly expires at the end of 2016. Measurement Canada requires recertification only upon expiry. According to the Tariff, the analogs will be removed when they have expired. They do not expire until Dec. 31 of the year in which they expire. So, if exchanged before Dec. 31 they are not following the Tariff, specifically the Meter Choice point.
Our meter base (which is owned by me and 100% my responsibility) isn’t CSA certified for combustible electronic meters. Combustible meters weren’t even invented when my meter base was certified safe by CSA. Any combustible electronic meter being installed should then only be done upon receipt of a letter signed by a BC Hydro professional engineer saying that doing so is a safe practice and that, should any fire damage occur as a result, BC Hydro will assume full responsibility. If they are as safe as you purport, this should be no problem and necessary if a customer is forced in to having a non-analog meter installed on a non CSA certified meter base. I would expect that assurance in writing.
There are safety, fire concerns with these faulty Itron smart meters. They have design flaws that need to be addressed and should be recalled with Itron refunding the costs to us for the program and legacy fees. Of course, there are increasingly many world wide studies raising health concerns re EMF’s. As well, there are 50,000 or so BC Hydro customers having their smart meters read manually at no cost, unlike the punitive monthly cost for those who opted in the Meter Choices program to keep their safe analog meter and yet only have it read every two months.
There is misrepresentation in the business case where Hydro used a 20 year life span for amortization of expenses; we knew then that 20 years was overstated, and now we know it’s closer to 5-7 years. BCUC was given “costs” for opt outs by Hydro. Hydro “justified” the costs, but who knows how they loaded their estimates. Mr. Dix was right that Hydro made its estimate based on fewer people keeping their legacy meter. Hydro said if the number of people increased, the cost per customer would be reduced. This is something Mr. Bennett never answered. The question to Dix and Bennett is why hasn’t this reduction occurred, and why hasn’t BCUC made it occur?
B.C. Gov’t Minister, Mr. Rich Coleman, made the statement in one press release that, ‘BC Hydro will not install a new meter without the homeowner’s consent‘. “Individual home owners who had not yet had a smart meter installed on their home, would not have to have one …You will not be ‘forced’ into having one or be in fear of it being installed when you are not home.” This assurance certainly is not being followed with the current push to force customers with perfectly good, safe analog meters to have a radio-off or regular smart meter. I do not accept either a radio-off or smart meter when/if my perfectly good analog meter expires at the end of 2016. I want another analog meter that has been certified for a few years, preferably a decade. Measurement Canada told me my current meter would have a couple decades more life span if recertified at the end of the year.
BC Hydro says there are no more analogs for replacement yet knowingly destroyed/ got rid of? thousands of analogs they removed from BC homes. What a huge waste of public money!! This is coming out of B.C. taxpayers money. Suitable replacement analog meters are still available for purchase ( I have phoned some B.C. companies suggested by Measurement Canada and an electrician) yet BC Hydro refuses to buy more or recertify analogs they have as they had previously done since their inception until the smart meter program. As well, some people have received replacement analogs with certification only left for a couple of years instead of the usual decade before recertification. Can a a bc hydro customer then purchase a certified analog replacement, acceptable to Measurement Canada who is fine with people having analogs if they are certified?? This should be acceptable to Hydro if they don’t want to recertify any of the thousands of legacy meters that they should have had in stock from their removal from B.C. homes over the past few years with the Smart Meter program push.
These are important issues. I am concerned about often inaccurate and misleading statements to the public re many aspects of the smart meter program and in form letters sent to those of us who still have and want to keep our safe, reliable analog meters. I am writing other MLA’s with my concerns, and citing these inaccuracies plus want to contact some other public media sources about smart meter and legacy program concerns/inaccuracies so appreciate accurate, specific answers to the questions raised not generalities.
XX
Sharon Noble
Director, Coalition to Stop Smart Meters
A: Free radicals damage DNA
B: Non-ionizing radiation creates free radicals.
C: Therefore, non-ionizing radiation can damage DNA
DAMAGED DNA CAN LEAD TO CANCER.