Public comment: Let us opt out of EWEB meters

Eugene residents ask for the right to refuse EWEB’s new meters, which they say are causing health issues and represent a new type of surveillance of the community. At the City Council March 11:

Sabrina Siegel: We need your help. I’m Sabrina Siegel in Amazon Neighborhood. EWEB is forcing smart meters on our homes now and says we are no longer allowed to keep our safe and healthy mechanical analog meters.

[00:00:28] They’ve recently changed their policy and give us until March 13 to tell them if we will accept the smart meter or go without utilities.

[00:00:38] Some of us are absolutely unable to accept this device on our homes as it is life-threatening to electrosensitive people or those who have electronic medical implants such as pacemakers. We’re being discriminated against.

[00:00:56] I am electrosensitive and cannot breathe when electromagnetic or radio frequency radiation is substantial, as my blood will not hold and circulate oxygen.

[00:01:08] I feel that I am dying in this situation and sometimes I have to drive to the countryside to avoid and detox from these frequencies and sleep in my car, actually, if it’s too high wherever I am.

[00:01:24] EWEB says they will turn the radio frequency part off for those that are opted out, but these meters still emit a large amount of microwave radiation as they are creating the mesh net, which EWEB doesn’t tell you about that, the mesh net between all the homes, and are also producing extremely high dangerous levels of dirty electricity on the wiring of the home.

[00:01:51] I sent you the science on this earlier today via email. Our citizens need your protection right now. Please communicate with EWEB and direct them to allow people to have a choice of meter so that they can live safely in their homes while having utilities. Otherwise, our houses aren’t homes without utilities, right? And I have a son. He goes to school, he needs electricity, and I can’t live in that situation with the smart meters. So we need your help. Please help.

[00:02:30] Victor Odlivak: Yes, this is kind of a followup from what I said six years ago, but it’s, I’ve got all the data now. I’ve sent a copy to all the council members, city manager, so the subject is smart meter measurement of radiation. So, when the smart meter is turned off, opted out, it is still sending 15.850 mW per meter squared. And this happens because of this mechanism called switching mode power supply. So there’s a tiny little computer inside the smart meter.

[00:03:08] If you put a two or three volt transistor type battery in there, you wouldn’t need it. But instead, you’ve got to switch the power on and off, and on and off, and on and off, thousands of times in a minute. And that is generating what they call this ‘dirty electricity.’ But it’s that number that I just quoted, that 15.850 mW per meter squared.

[00:03:31] Now, if you go to Springfield, you know, they’re a very smart place. They don’t have money to throw away like Eugene.  You go to Lovely on 4th and Main Street, very nice place to eat. There are six analog meters there. Analog. And what we read is 0.290 mW. Now, 0.290 is very different from 15.850 and remember, there’s six meters there. Divided, you get 0.50 mW per meter (squared) and that’s a whole lot less.

[00:04:10] And so in order to make myself safe (I am also EMS sensitive, you can see these little sores on my fingers), I had to pay $75,000 to get a metal roof on my house, to get metal siding, to get the soffits metal, connecting, to have the house grounded. Where my head rests and it’s 0.016 mW per meter squared.

[00:04:39] Alan Stein: I speak here tonight to urge this group to stop allowing EWEB replacing meters that affect our health. As a citizen here in Ward 1, I’m really speaking as three different people:

[00:04:56] (1.) I have a house at Almaden Street. I legally opted out and they’re telling me that they have to change my meter or shut it off.

[00:05:07] (2.) I also am a landowner in downtown Eugene on 1374 Willamette Street. There are 10 tenants there and many of them opted out.

[00:05:19] (3.) What I really want to express, the third thing is, that I own Stargate Bookstore. I’m one of the few businesses there, for 37 years this year, and I know by facts, especially what he just shared. That it’s bad for your health. I have customers coming into my store, crying, that they live in apartments next to where they opted out and they became sick. Now they’re crying again because they have no choice.

[00:05:48] So I have some requests for the City Council.

[00:05:53] First, have EWEB stop smuggling in these unsafe and illegal meters and stop calling them ‘smart meters,’ because they’re stupid. And if you educate yourself, there’s plenty of facts all around the world.

[00:06:08] 2. Don’t let my locally-owned bookstore go out of business, forced out of business, because they said they will shut off my electricity if I choose to not follow that.

[00:06:20] I’m very passionate about it. I listen to my community. This is very important, because they’re not going to stop doing it. And there’s plenty of facts, and I want to thank people from Families For Safe Technology. They’re all volunteers. They have the facts. If you want facts, they’ll give you a report in 48 hours that’s not biased. This is real stuff. And they’re going to 20G and it’s unsafe.

[00:06:49] Joshua Korn: Regarding the smart meters that EWEB is basically trying to force upon a lot of us: Some of us choose to have a healthy radiation-free home and still have a working analog meter on our residence.

[00:07:09] And these meters have been in use for decades, some of them, they work fine. They don’t need to be replaced. And this is free of toxic radiation.

[00:07:23] In my work, I basically do electromagnetic health research. That’s what I do. And this toxic radiation from these devices has been considered by the World Health Organization to be a 2B carcinogen.

[00:07:42] So this is clearly a toxin that is being emitted by these means. These meters, these AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure) meters, also known as ‘smart meters,’ are not safe.

[00:07:53] They’re only considered by the FCC safe because the FCC is a captured agency. I’ve discussed that here with the council in past meetings, but this is basically when an agency is essentially regulating itself due to the revolving door of the agency hiring people from the industry itself. And this goes on in many industries, including the pharmaceutical industry.

[00:08:22] But why is this happening in terms of the smart meters? Well, it comes down to surveillance capitalism. Surveillance capitalism is where basically data and surveillance of the community and the people is the new form of currency. And smart meters are the tool of this trade, at least one of the tools of this trade.

[00:08:49] So please stop EWEB from violating our current contract, which doesn’t have any terms about using, forcing these meters on us, but simply requires us to pay for our services. And now with these letters that their attorney is sending our residents, they’re threatening to shut off our services if we don’t submit.

[00:09:17] Cindy Allen: California, Arizona, Texas, Maine, and other states with huge utilities such as PG&E in California have successful opt-out programs that allow people to keep their analog meters and to replace a smart meter with an analog.

[00:09:33] Lane County’s EPUD has a smart meter opt-out. There’s extensive video history at Families for Safe Technologies, Friends of Amazon Creek and other internet sites that document Dr. Paul Dart’s presentation to EWEB, the 2013 opt-in vote, public comment sessions, the smart meter documentary Take Back Your Power, lectures in Eugene with leading experts in RF radiation and smart meter concerns, Josh del Soul, director of Take Back Your Power, Dafna Tackover, Katie Singer, Dr. Martin Pall. Video of these programs were sent to the EWEB Board and are part of the Eugene smart meter record.

[00:10:18] They document the many health issues of RF radiation, increased inflammation, changes to the heart and brain, altered endocrine function, trouble sleeping, increased rates of cancer, etc. The smart meter’s cybersecurity risk and vulnerability of a centralized grid fires DC to AC switching, causing dirty electricity on the wiring, Fourth Amendment violations, increases to the bill, etc.

[00:10:42] Jan. 24, FBI director Christopher Wray testified before the House Select Committee, warning about Chinese hacking of our grid system, electric and water. He also mentioned malware, component chips. It was the same warning that Gen. David Petraeus made in Take Back Your Power.

[00:11:04] The EWEB opt-in changed to an opt-out in 2018, and I sent my letter in wanting my analog meter and not a smart meter, and heard little from EWEB about this from 2018 to 2024.

[00:11:19] To send a letter during the winter months saying, ‘Unless I choose a smart meter my utilities may be shut off,’ is very wrong. Why this sudden urgency to put a smart meter on every home in Eugene?

[00:11:31] Let the people who want the analog meters keep them. That’s what other utilities have done. I’m a person with extreme EMF sensitivity because of an implant from an accident. A letter from my doctor is on file at EWEB, a public-owned utility.

[00:11:47] John Q: The City Council hears about adverse effects from EWEB’s so-called smart meters, as members of the public ask for the right to opt out.