MANTI—The Manti City Council has approved a policy permitting residents to opt out of the city’s current initiative to replace manually read electric meters with meters that transmit data about electricity use to city computers using radio frequencies.
About 20 people showed up at the council meeting last Wednesday, Oct. 20. The majority appeared to have come to express concerns about the meters. About a dozen made statements contending that auto-read meters could cause health effects, invade privacy and infringe on people’s control over their lives.
Manti City is beginning the process of installing what, in the industry, are known as AMI meters. The term stands for “advanced metering infrastructure.”
City Manager Kent Barton said the meters would be installed over the next three to four years on 1,200 electrical connections in the city—minus customers who opt out. About 340 meters had been installed before the concerns surfaced.
Under the new policy, residents need to apply to opt out. To qualify, a resident must own the property involved, cannot have received a disconnect notice for nonpayment in the previous 12 months, and must not have a history of tampering with a meter.
Customers living in the city will be charged an extra $10 per month for manual reading of their meters, while customers outside the city limits will pay $20.
Blake DeMill, director of the Manti Electrical Department, cited a number of reasons for moving to the meters. He said it is getting difficult to hire meter readers. And it’s getting harder to read meters every month. “We have locked gates, we have dogs.”
Human readers make mistakes, he said. “The more people who handle the numbers, the more chance there is for mistakes.”
With automated meters transmitting usage information fairly constantly, the Electric Department can identify maintenance problems as soon as they occur, he added.
Once up and operating, the AMI meters will save a lot of money. In fact, because of anticipated future savings in labor costs, the AMI meters are being purchased and installed at no cost to electricity customers, he said.
Most residents who spoke at the council meeting were not asked for and did not state their names.
One man claimed the AMI meters “transmit about 60 times what the FCC (U.S. Federal Communication Commission) allows.
“The meters transmit in microwave frequencies, which is the frequency that the 5G transmits on,” he added. “The 5G is something used by the military for crowd control. This is what causes people sleeplessness in California, which is a reason a lot of California cities have abandoned them.
“If you charge us additional to opt out, that’s an additional tax a lot of us cannot afford,” the man said. “Why are you doing this? I have to ask that we hold up on this.”
“Do we really want Manti to be a ‘smart’ city?” one woman asked. (The AMI meters are sometimes called “smart meters.”) She said smart meters, along with smart appliances, “reach into our homes and make decisions for us….If we have all the cities in the country on the smart grid, I see a danger.”
Another speaker said she had lived in South Jordan, which used AMI meters. “It did change my sleep patterns, and it did change my health,” she said. “I for one am very sensitive to 5G, and I have to protect myself against that kind of stuff.”
She even claimed the electrical utility serving South Jordan used the meters to shut off people’s air conditioning at 5 p.m. But someone in the audience said if air conditioning went off, it was probably because of a rolling blackout.
Yet another woman said waves from auto-read meters affect DNA, the brain, hearing and how much sugar is in the bloodstream. She said some of her information came from something called “Chap News.”
A city council member noted that Dominion Energy, formerly Questar Gas, has used automated meters statewide for 20 years. Only recently have some customers put pressure on the company to set up an opt-out program.
Barton said AMI meters are being used in Ephraim, Sterling, Gunnison and Moroni, among other towns in the county. Manti, he said, is one of the last cities in the state to switch over to the auto-read meters.
In a statement submitted to the Sanpete Messenger on Monday, DeMill said, “Our research with industry experts and the manufacturer of the AMI meters…suggests that the radio frequency waves produced by the meters are significantly lower than those produced by other common items inside most homes, including cell phones, remote controls for TVs and appliances, microwave ovens, radios (including AM/FM radios) as well as Bluetooth devices. The meters we are installing conform to all electrical safety regulations.”
