New e‑mails brought to light between Pacif­ic Gas and Elec­tric (PG&E), South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Edi­son (SCE), and the Cal­i­for­nia Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion (CPUC) reveal the extent of cor­rup­tion and back­room deal­ing that have char­ac­ter­ized the state’s smart meter pro­gram.  E‑mails reveal that for­mer CPUC Pres­i­dent Michael Peev­ey was aware of health prob­lems caused by smart meters ear­ly on in the pro­gram.   Com­mis­sion­ers and staff expe­ri­enced over­charg­ing and elec­tron­ic inter­fer­ence issues with smart meters on their homes.  Mean­while, util­i­ties schemed with reg­u­la­tors behind the scenes to raise opt-out fees to force peo­ple in pover­ty to stick with the unpop­u­lar meters and prop up the fail­ing mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar smart grid pro­gram in Cal­i­for­nia.

For­mer CPUC Pres­i­dent Michael Peev­ey, who retired in Decem­ber and is cur­rent­ly the sub­ject of a crim­i­nal probe by the U.S. Attor­ney and State Attor­ney Gen­er­al who are inves­ti­gat­ing alle­ga­tions of bribery and cor­rup­tion, assured the pub­lic that the meters were accu­rate, were no fire haz­ard, and no threat to health. A dif­fer­ent pic­ture has emerged from ini­tial research into more than 65,000 e‑mails and mem­os between CPUC and PG&E. Peev­ey wrote to PG&E in Sep­tem­ber of 2010 (empha­sis ours):

“The press cov­er­age was very good and helps PG&E big time, over­all, as well as oth­er com­pa­nies, etc. One thought for the com­pa­ny: If it were my deci­sion I would let any­one who wants to keep their old meter keep it, if they claim they suf­fer from EMF and/or relat­ed elec­tron­ic-relat­ed ill­ness­es… I would insti­tute such a pol­i­cy qui­et­ly and sole­ly on an indi­vid­ual basis. There real­ly are peo­ple who feel pain, etc., relat­ed to EMF,etc., and rather than have them become hys­ter­i­cal, etc., I would qui­et­ly leave them alone. Kick it around. And, it sounds like the com­pa­ny may already have tak­en this step, based on a cou­ple of the com­ments at yesterday’s pub­lic hearing.”

Peev­ey says to PG&E, “if it were my deci­sion.”  As San­di Mau­r­er of the EMF Safe­ty Net­work has point­ed out, being the Com­mis­sion­er in charge of the smart meter opt out pro­ceed­ing, tech­ni­cal­ly it was his deci­sion.  But that does not appear to be where the true pow­er lies accord­ing to this e‑mail exchange.  Appar­ent­ly the “Com­pa­ny” calls the shots and Com­mis­sion­ers obey. The “oth­er com­pa­nies” Peev­ey refers to include GE, Lan­dis & Gyr, Sil­ver Spring Net­works, Welling­ton Ener­gy, Ver­i­zon, Edel­man and others.

In anoth­er e‑mail from 2010, Peevey’s Chief of Staff Car­ol Brown writes to PG&E:

“…so far I have done OK just lis­ten­ing to the sad tales of EMF poi­son­ing – and telling them thank you for bring­ing it to our atten­tion – and then not offer­ing them any solu­tion!!! I just want­ed to have a resource in case!”

Bri­an Cher­ry, VP of Reg­u­la­to­ry Rela­tions at PG&E replies:

“Prozac might be a solution!”

Sug­gest­ing that peo­ple take phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to treat health prob­lems caused by the company’s meters is unspeak­ably arro­gant, dan­ger­ous, and cor­rupt. The only thing that has con­sis­tent­ly helped peo­ple suf­fer­ing health effects from EMF has been the removal of smart meters and oth­er near­by wire­less trans­mit­ters.  And the util­i­ties knew it. But to offi­cial­ly have smart meters removed, the CPUC under Peev­ey, required Cal­i­for­ni­ans to pay an upfront fee and month­ly charge start­ing in May 2012.

In pub­lic, the util­i­ties and CPUC have jus­ti­fied the $75 ini­tial­ly and $10/ month fees for ana­log meters (to have the same thing that cus­tomers have always had) by argu­ing that indi­vid­u­als should pay for the costs they cre­ate.  In pri­vate how­ev­er, a dif­fer­ent sto­ry emerges. In e‑mails between Cal­i­for­nia util­i­ties and Marzia Zafar, CPUC’s cur­rent Direc­tor of Pol­i­cy and Plan­ning, a 15 year util­i­ty indus­try employ­ee includ­ing 4 years as a So Cal Gas lob­by­ist who was involved in the Bill Dev­ereaux Spy Scan­dal, Zafar tells her util­i­ty col­leagues:

“I think if there is not an ini­tial fee your esti­mate of 2% opt out goes out the door and you’ll have more like 20% or 50% opt out which will then make the whole project that we spent over $7 bil­lion on a com­plete and total waste.”

Zafar is say­ing if they elim­i­nate the ini­tial opt out charge for ana­log meters, up to half of California’s elec­tric cus­tomers may refuse smart meters, giv­en all the pub­lic­i­ty around safe­ty and inac­cu­ra­cy prob­lems, and that needs to be avoid­ed at all costs – by ensur­ing fees remain unaf­ford­able.  This e‑mail demon­strates clear­ly that the opt out fee is intend­ed not to “cov­er costs” but to sup­press choice, prop up a fail­ing and dan­ger­ous smart grid and penal­ize peo­ple for dis­obey­ing a forced, cor­po­rate and unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic deployment.

Mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult for those in pover­ty to opt out seemed to be a par­tic­u­lar pri­or­i­ty for South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Edi­son, Peevey’s for­mer employ­er. Many low-income cus­tomers live in apart­ment build­ings where banks of smart meters expose res­i­dents to high lev­els of pulsed RF radi­a­tion that the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion con­sid­ers a Class 2B Car­cino­gen.  “CARE” is a reduced util­i­ty rate pro­gram for fam­i­lies liv­ing below the fed­er­al pover­ty line. In Jan­u­ary 2012, Michael Hoover of SCE wrote to Zafar of CPUC and Cher­ry of PG&E:

“We need an up front fee that is sig­nif­i­cant, or a path to achieve that. This is espe­cial­ly true for CARE cus­tomers. This is a big deal for us and I think the poten­tial for sig­nif­i­cant increas­es in opt out is rather large if the fee is set too low.  Are we all on the same page?”

Could using finan­cial screws to force haz­ardous meters on those in pover­ty be too tox­ic even for Bri­an Cher­ry, who replies:

“No”

Then Zafar, like a bul­ly in the play­ground, chides Cher­ry for being soft:

“That’s because PG&E’s judg­ment is suspect…”

In Novem­ber of 2011, CPUC offi­cials inter­nal­ly cir­cu­lat­ed a press release from Stop Smart Meters! that made ref­er­ence to the fact that PG&E had recent­ly replaced a smart meter with an ana­log on a woman’s house in San­ta Cruz whose fam­i­ly was suf­fer­ing health impacts from the new microwave-emit­ting meter.  Zafar rebukes PG&E and orders them to keep smart meters on homes, even after res­i­dents have demand­ed and giv­en legal notice that they be removed, and even for those with physician’s let­ters or those suf­fer­ing so bad­ly they could no longer occu­py their homes  (“this blog” is StopSmartMeters.org):

“See below. Please do not replace smart meters with ana­log meters; I’m assum­ing this blog is delu­sion­al and they’re lying. The Com­mis­sion will issue a (Pro­posed Deci­sion) some­time this month or ear­ly next month to con­sid­er an opt-out pro­gram; until such time you have the delay list.”

Despite Zafar’s hard line stance, it turns out she knew from per­son­al expe­ri­ence that there were seri­ous prob­lems with the meters. She wrote in Jan­u­ary 2011 to PG&E:

“I’m also copy­ing Cliff to this e‑mail as I spoke with him this morn­ing; he came to my house :-). I have a smart meter and a motion light inter­fer­ence that is hope­ful­ly now resolved.”

Accord­ing to the LA Times, when a smart meter was installed on for­mer CPUC Pres­i­dent Michael Peevey’s 3118 sq. foot sec­ond home in Sea Ranch on the Sono­ma Coun­ty coast (where Peev­ey and PG&E’s VP of Reg­u­la­to­ry Rela­tions Bri­an Cher­ry shared bot­tles of John­ny Walk­er Blue Label accord­ing to e‑mails) Peevey’s bills went through the roof and he com­plained to PG&E in Novem­ber 2011:

“Please check some­thing out for me. Just had a “smart meter” installed at Sea Ranch. And, now I have the bill for the first month. Some­thing is screwy. The bill says we used 973 KWH ver­sus 438 for the same time peri­od one year ago. Yet, there was no one at the house dur­ing the most recent 30 day peri­od.  Nor was there any­one there one year ago. Obvi­ous­ly some­thing is wrong. I would like an explanation.”

Appar­ent­ly Peev­ey wasn’t the only Com­mis­sion­er who report­ed sig­nif­i­cant over­charg­ing.  PG&E wrote in an e‑mail that two com­mis­sion­ers in one night com­plained about inac­cu­ra­cies on their  bills after smart meters were installed.

In Sep­tem­ber 2011, after a fire start­ed in a smart metered elec­tri­cal pan­el in a San­ta Rosa Mall, Cher­ry wrote to CPUC Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Paul Clanon.  There was not the slight­est con­cern about whether the smart meters were actu­al­ly start­ing fires, or whether and how the CPUC and/ or PG&E should inves­ti­gate this poten­tial­ly seri­ous pub­lic safe­ty haz­ard.  Instead the focus was on spin­ning the sto­ry in the media:

“We have also con­tact­ed sev­er­al fire chiefs who are sym­pa­thet­ic and may com­ment on the most recent meter issue.”

What exact­ly is meant by “sym­pa­thet­ic” giv­en that hun­dreds of thou­sands of smart meters have now been recalled due to fire risk and peo­ple have lost their lives?

In Novem­ber 2013, PG&E was again scold­ed by Zafar after their call cen­ter staff advised a cus­tomer who had prob­lems with smart meters to (gasp!) con­tact the CPUC.  Sid­ney Dietz of PG&E responds:

“We found the call, and indeed our cus­tomer-ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive (CSR) advised, in error, the cus­tomer to call the CPUC. One of the man­agers con­tact­ed this par­tic­u­lar CSR and her super­vi­sor and made sure she under­stands the prob­lem, and we will be updat­ing the script to make it absolute­ly clear that we should not pass the prob­lem to the CPUC.  This same man­ag­er is one of the train­ers for the CSRs (they train con­stant­ly), and will main­tain an empha­sis on not pass­ing the buck. As you know, the group at PG&E that works on com­plaints and speaks reg­u­lar­ly with the CPUC com­plaints group under­stand that this is not the right way to han­dle cus­tomers, and works to get this kind of thing correct.”

The task of the Cal­i­for­nia Pub­lic Util­i­ties Commission’s Con­sumer Affairs Branch — accord­ing to the CPUC’s web­site – is to: “assist con­sumers in resolv­ing dis­putes with their util­i­ty com­pa­ny.” Yet, Ms. Zafar chid­ed PG&E for “pass­ing the prob­lem” when cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives sug­gest­ed that peo­ple with smart meter prob­lems con­tact the CPUC.  These e‑mails con­firm what watch­dog groups have been claim­ing for years—that the CPUC lit­er­al­ly has become a satel­lite office for the investor owned util­i­ty and tele­com cor­po­ra­tions – a “rogue agency” as for­mer CPUC Pres­i­dent Loret­ta Lynch now refers to the agency she once led.

While CPUC offi­cials pri­vate­ly grap­pled with prob­lems caused by smart meters at their own homes, pub­licly they denied these prob­lems exist­ed despite thou­sands of com­plaints to the con­trary con­firm­ing these were sys­temic prob­lems. An unfair and extor­tion­ate opt out pol­i­cy was approved in vio­la­tion of the CA Pub­lic Util­i­ty Code, charg­ing cus­tomers hun­dreds of dol­lars a year to pro­tect their safe­ty.  Thou­sands still refuse to pay this extortion.

Those respon­si­ble for this crim­i­nal activ­i­ty should be pros­e­cut­ed to the fullest extent of the law, and the Cal­i­for­nia leg­is­la­ture needs to do its job and hold hear­ings to get to the bot­tom of these crim­i­nal rela­tion­ships that have cost Cal­i­for­ni­ans their lives.  All redact­ed e‑mails must imme­di­ate­ly be made public.

Peev­ey and com­pa­ny should be put behind bars.

Giv­en the lies, reck­less­ness and betray­al of trust that has char­ac­ter­ized the forced smart meter deploy­ment, the extor­tion­ate opt out fee pol­i­cy should imme­di­ate­ly be elim­i­nat­ed and past fees that have been paid by ratepay­ers refund­ed with an apol­o­gy. Exces­sive charges paid by util­i­ty cus­tomers based on inac­cu­rate smart meter read­ings must like­wise be refund­ed.   A tru­ly inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into fires, health haz­ards, and the cal­i­bra­tion and accu­ra­cy of smart meters must be car­ried out.  Smart meters must be recalled and replaced with safe, electro­mechan­i­cal ana­log meters NOW. At the end of the day, human life is more impor­tant than pro­tect­ing this cor­rupt pow­er struc­ture and the egos of PG&E and CPUC executives.

Spe­cial Thanks to the fol­low­ing groups for ongo­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive research efforts that have led to the dis­cov­ery of these e‑mails.  There will be more to come!

EMF Safe­ty Net­work, Sebastopol, CA
Cen­ter for Elec­tros­mog Pre­ven­tion, La Mesa, CA
Eco­log­i­cal Options Net­work, Boli­nas, CA

Take a look at the slimy e‑mails for your­self- it ain’t pret­ty.  Drop us a line if you find some­thing juicy or incriminating.