A bright yellow, billboard-sized sign posted on a private pasture lit by the setting sun was hard to miss on a recent afternoon for drivers heading east on Guerneville Road past Willowside Road: “Protect your health and privacy rights. Say no to PG&E!” the sign read.<\/p>\n
As the utility company continues to roll out its new SmartMeters, North Coast customers who question the technology’s effect on health, privacy and accuracy have kept up their vocal opposition.<\/p>\n
“I don’t want one on my property, period,” said Jim Swasey, 64, a retired boat repairman who agreed to let SmartMeter opponents post the large sign on his pasture on Guerneville Road about two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
The sign is just one part of a trail of protests, YouTube videos, stickers, letters and online groups compiling a trove of opinions taking issue with PG&E’s claims that radio frequencies emitted by the meters have a negligible effect on the body.<\/p>\n
Despite these efforts, PG&E’s SmartMeter installation program is on course to upgrade all applicable gas and electric meters serviced by the company sometime in 2012.<\/p>\n
Nearly 60 percent of meters already have been upgraded overall in Sonoma County’s nine cities, according to Paul Moreno, a PG&E spokesman.<\/p>\n
However, only about 5 percent of the meters in Sebastopol and surrounding areas, ground zero for a leading resistance group, the EMF Safety Network, have been swapped out for SmartMeters, according to Moreno’s figures.<\/p>\n
SmartMeters send wireless data to PG&E once daily via a single-watt radio, according to PG&E’s website. The communication lasts 45 seconds. At a distance of 10 feet, those radio frequencies are about one-thousandth as much as a typical cell phone, the site said.<\/p>\n
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