The SMUD Board of Directors can be compared to the animal kingdom as weasels. In their lives outside the meeting room we have no idea what they are like but inside that room making policy that knowingly exposes hundreds of thousands of customers to smart meter radiation, concealing the opt out program and analog meter option, and deceiving customers about the number of transmissions, the peak power of those transmissions, and the robust scientific literature on the biological harms of wireless radiation they are clearly weasels. Remember that they were elected to serve four year terms and took at oath of office.
Anyway, the Board of Directors has the authority by law to make policy decisions for SMUD. The Chief Executive Officer and General Manager, currently Arlen Orchard, does not have this authority. Nor does any project manager (such as the smart meter project manager) or the General Counsel, currently Laura Lewis, or any member of the staff. Nor does the Board President.
This is according to the Municipal Utility District Act (MUD Act), part of the California Public Utilities Code
11883.
The board is the legislative body of the district and determines all questions of policy.
11885.
The board shall supervise and regulate every utility owned and operated by the district, including the fixing of rates, rentals, charges, and classifications, and the making and enforcement of rules, regulations, contracts, practices, and schedules, for or in connection with any service, product, or commodity owned or controlled by the district.
From the very beginning of the SMUD smart grid and smart meter program SMUD has been deceptive, secretive, and misleading about its true intentions and what it was planning to do. The only resolution that ever authorized SMUD to remove any customer’s analog electric meter and replace it with a smart electric meter was Resolution 07-08-10, and Attachment E thereto, approved by the Board of Directors on August 2, 2007. This resolution made the determination that the time-based metering and communication standard proposed by the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005 was appropriate for SMUD. This resolution did NOT authorize the smart meter program; the wholesale removal of all customers’ analog meters and their replacement with smart meters.
You can download a copy of that resolution and attachment here:
SMUD concealed the very existence of this resolution from Smart Citizens in 2014, when Smart Citizens made a Public Records Act request for it. SMUD presented instead a resolution from 2009 authorizing the spending of nearly $90 million on smart meters and on the data management services associated with them. SMUD claimed that it had no other resolution responsive to the record request. Finally the Smart Citizen asked for all resolutions approved by the Board of Directors during a certain period, which period was most likely to include the resolution authorizing the smart meter program. SMUD sent over 400 resolutions and attachments. Among those was Resolution 07-08-10 and Attachment E.
The careful observer may notice that Attachment E does NOT, by its plain terms, authorize the removal from all customers’ homes and businesses their analog electric meters or the deployment or installation of smart electric meters.
SMUD BoD never authorized the SM program as done
The Board of Directors approved Resolution 12-03-09 on March 1, 2012, creating the opt out policy and only making non-transmitting digital meters available.
You can download a copy of that resolution and its Attachment E here:
Resolution 12-03-09 Attachment E
Sacramento Smart Meter Awareness, which included dozens of people who had been personally injured by radiation from their SMUD smart meter, pressured the Board of Directors to change the opt out program by making available an analog meter. SMUD refused to budge, lied, and held a smart meter “workshop” in February, 2013. As part of this workshop SMUD continued its policy and practice of deception, concealment and fraud in a deliberate ongoing effort to mislead SMUD customers and cause them to suffer health problems. SSMA continued, with ten or twelve people speaking to the Directors at their regular meetings and demanding an analog meter option.
Finally in response to this sustained pressure from SSMA, the Board of Directors approved Resolution 13-03-08 on March 21, 2013, amending the opt out program by making available an analog meter. It became the first municipal utility in the U.S. to do this. SMUD never would have done this without sustained citizen pressure.
You can download a copy of that resolution here:
Resolution 13-03-08 Attachment C
Those are the most significant resolutions from the point of view of citizens concerned about avoiding exposure to radiation from smart meters.