Lisa Helps on A Channel

 From the A Channel website. Video is here.

August 19, 2011

VICTORIA - When Lisa Helps takes us around the side of the house she's sitting for a friend Friday, we find a box built overtop of the BC Hydro meter and a message you can't miss - "Do Not Install Smart Meter Here."

Helps says "The World Health Organization came out in May 2011 and said technology we're not sure about like cell phones and smart meters are a possible carcinogen, and to me the word possible is really the important thing. It's not saying these are going to cause cancer, but you know what, if we think they might, we've got to go a little more slowly on this."

Helps is part of a movement questioning BC Hydro's plan to equip homes and businesses with new radio-frequency equipped smart meters that track hourly electricity consumption. “The smart meter program is really a way to modernize, upgrade our system, a way we can help reduce the pressure on rates to our customers, over 3 years the smart meter program can reduce rate pressures by $70 million to our customers" says BC Hydro Spokesperson Ted Olynyk.

After hearing from a number of people, Victoria City Councillor Philippe Lucas presented a motion to council to request BC Hydro allow people to refuse a new meter. He says there's been a lack of consultation, and and suggests a 2nd option. "The alternative I'm suggesting is Corix, the company that's making the wireless smart meters Hydro is putting in, also have wired versions of the meter. So people who opt out have the wired version and still pass on the info that Hydro needs."

BC Hydro says the wired-meters Lucas suggests cost $35,000 each, and have only been used in industrial applications. As for health concerns, Ted Olynyk points out some of the other "possible" carcinogens listed in the same category as the smart meters by the World Health Organization. "We'd be eliminating cars, GPS, cell phones, and doctors wireless pagers."

The final word from Lisa Helps: People have a choice to use a cell phone or wireless internet, but not to refuse a smart meter, and that's not right.

BC Hydro says it has already installed about 1600 of the new meters in the Victoria area.

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