Navopache Electric Cooperative is a not-for-profit member-owned distribution cooperative, serving over 32,000 members and approximately 40,000 meters across the White Mountains of Arizona and western-New Mexico. Our service territory is over 10,000 square miles with 3,500 miles of line…

Sedona AZ (January 17, 2014) – Many Arizona utility ratepayers are demanding the Arizona Corporation Commission regulate industry-wide smart meter installation programs due to questionable health, privacy and financial impacts. The following is a letter to the SedonaEye.com editor from Warren Woodward, APS ratepayer, who asks, “In my letter to the Arizona Corporation Commission (below) there is a You Tube link to video proof of blatant lying by Arizona’s Navopache Electric Cooperative regarding the transmissions of their “smart” meters. As I ask in the letter, “If “smart'” meters are so wonderful, why all the lying?”:

January 17, 2014

Re: Docket # E-00000C-11-0328

The ACC is tasked with the responsibility to protect AZ ratepayers by weighing the costs and benefits of all state utility requests.

Commissioners;

Another Arizona electric utility has been found lying.

At their website, Navopache Electric Cooperative makes all the usual bogus, fraudulent claims about “smart” meters but this one is a standout: “… our meters only transmit for 1.5 seconds every 4 hours (a total of 9 seconds per day).” [http://www.navopache.org/content/ami]

That is a complete and total lie.

Using a Gigahertz Solutions HF35C microwave analyzer, I found “smart” meters in the Navopache service area to be transmitting much, much more often than “1.5 seconds every 4 hours” as Navopache claims.

You can see the proof on video by searching Youtube for my name and Navopache Caught Lying [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BjMGaQdmxY]. In the video you will see an example of my findings.

The Navopache “smart” meter is transmitting continuously.

By the way, the HF35C microwave analyzer is directional. In other words, it has to be aimed at what you want to measure. So, in the video, I am not picking up other sources of microwave. Additionally, the HF35C makes specific sounds for specific sources of microwave. In other words, if I was picking up a cordless phone, router or cell tower I’d know it because I’d hear a different tone for each, different than the tone heard in the video.

Over the last several years I have chronicled and brought to your attention the countless lies told by APS about almost every aspect of their “smart” meters. Now Navopache is caught lying also.

If “smart” meters are so wonderful, why all the lying?

Nationwide requests for smart meter health, privacy and safety investigations are on the rise as radiation and fire hazards and utility third-party information selling have raised public awareness of adverse impacts

If “smart” meter microwave radiation is no big deal, why are utilities nationwide – now including Navopache – lying about it?

Why are the monopoly utilities allowed to lie and deceive the public? Navopache has not only been lying at their website but Navopache has also robo-called ratepayers in the Navopache service area, inviting them to public meetings where Navopache continued their lying about “smart” meters.

How can ratepayers be expected to make informed decisions if their utility is allowed to lie to them?

If Navopache is lying intentionally, one must ask why. If Navopache is lying unintentionally then isn’t the public being placed at risk by a monopoly utility so inept that they do not even understand the technology they are using? In either case, an immediate, thorough investigation by you is called for. In either case – and at the very least – shouldn’t Navopache be required to tell the truth about their “smart” meter transmissions with the same vigor and zeal with which they lied about their “smart” meter transmissions?

Several Arizona cities and communities opted out of smart meter programs in the face of its voters demand for action

Why haven’t you gotten a microwave analyzer and checked up on these false utility claims like I have been insisting you do for over two years?

Why am I doing the work and research you should be doing with your multi-million dollar budget and hired help?

When are you going to actually regulate instead of vegetate?

And by the way, having the Arizona Department of Health Services do a year-long “smart” meter health safety study while at the same time allowing continued installation “smart” meters is not regulating. It is negligent, backward and buck-passing. It’s like saying ‘we don’t know if this water is OK to drink but keep drinking it anyway while we do a study.’

By shirking your regulatory responsibilities, you commissioners have totally failed the public you are supposed to represent. And once again I am left wondering, are you corrupt, bought by the utilities, or just lazy and incompetent?

Sincerely,

Warren Woodward

Cc: Governor Jan Brewer, Attorney General Tom Horne

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