USA: moratorium op de slimme meter

Bron: Emf refugees 16 maart 2013

Hieronder de eerste paar alinea's van een lang verhaal over het plaatsje Ojai in Californië, waar de bewoners massaal in opstand kwamen tegen het plaatsen van slimme meters, met als gevolg een moratorium op het plaatsen van slimme meters.
Wat bewustzijn betreft omtrent de gevaren voor de gezondheid wel een enorm verschil met Nederland.

Ojai Places Moratorium On Smart Meters

By Tiobe Barron

On Tuesday, Ojai became the first city serviced by Southern California Edison to pass a moratorium on the installation of smart meters. All other communities with similar bans have been Pacific Gas & Electric customers, which serves northern and central California. Ojai City Council, minus absent Councilwoman Sue Horgan, voted unanimously in favor of the urgent ordinance, which does not require a second reading and goes into effect immediately. If SCE continues to install the devices in a blanket manner, without the explicit expressed desire of a given Ojai property owner, such instances may be interpreted under the moratorium as a misdemeanor.

Southern California Edison began deploying the wireless meters in Ojai in April of this year, installing them on homes and businesses across the valley in place of the old, analog meters. Smart meters allow two-way data communication about electricity usage, that, in theory, will encourage more efficient energy use and discourage use during peak hours. In 2008, the California Public Utilities Commission granted PG&E and SCE permission to begin blanket installation of smart meters in an effort to conserve electricity in a state that has suffered from energy crises in the past.

Controversy swiftly followed the wireless meters into Ojai, however, as community members attended City Council meetings in great numbers to express concern over possible adverse health effects from radiation emitted by the devices, possible privacy issues for devices that track usage of all home appliances and communicate that information wirelessly, and a lack of an “opt-out” program established by the CPUC prior to the mass deployment of smart meters.

“The issue of smart meters obviously has been a hot topic in this community for the last several months,” said city attorney Joseph Fletcher. “While the means of communication could be wired or fiber optic, what has been used in this state almost exclusively so far has been radio frequency transmitters. And that’s really the issue that has come back time and again about smart meters: The health risk concern about the risk of radio frequency transmissions from and to these pieces of equipment that are intended to be basically on every building in California within the next year.”



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