The fight against smart meters continues in Merritt following a Nov. 21 showing of Take Back Your Power, a documentary about the potential negative health and safety effects of smart meters.

The documentary criticized BC Hydro’s motivation behind the smart meter plan and its installation techniques. It also used findings of several studies and anecdotes that link negative health effects with the presence of smart meters.

Opponents also criticize Hydro’s implementation of the meters, saying it’s undemocratic and some installers even use harassment and intimidation to get people to accept the meters.

BC Hydro has said it will charge $35 per month to any household that keeps an analog meter. While Hydro says that fee will cover costs and won’t be profitable for the Crown corporation, critics say the fee is punitive.

Hydro has also offered a program in which customers can have a smart meter installed but pay $100 to have the radio transmitter turned off and an additional $20 per month for manual readings.

Smart meter holdouts have until Dec. 1 to enrol in one of the programs, but opponents are trying to find other ways to avoid paying the fees while keeping the analog technology.

Interior Smart Meter Awareness chairman Brian Thiesen, who is featured in the film, told the audience of about 60 people that a no-fee opt-out program never really existed.

One attendee said he’s retired and can’t afford to pay close to $500 per year for the opt-out program.

One attendee asked what options she has to avoid a smart meter when she’s sent the third letter from Hydro that says she has a deadline for a choice — saying if she doesn’t send it back, her silence is considered consent, and if she sends it back, she’s entering into a new contract.

Thiesen said sending Hydro a notice of defect is one way people are refusing the meter and the opt-out program fees. A notice of defect would essentially make Hydro’s letters about the meter choices program void while validating meter and fee refusal.

He said people who don’t pay their Hydro bills and ignore the letters have had their electricity cut off.

“Is our document or our solution going to end this program? I’m in the same boat you guys are, because there’s never been a smart meter program in B.C. and no one’s ever really had to fight this before, so we don’t know how this is going to end,” Thiesen said.

About a dozen people in the audience raised their hands when Thiesen asked who had a smart meter installed.

Some smart meter opponents say the wireless meters emit cancer-causing electromagnetic radiation.

One attendee expressed concern that he doesn’t know how the meters and increasing use of technology will impact future generations.

Thiesen said the presence of smart meters could be one of the factors in people’s diminishing health.

“If someone is making a statement about what this does to people, I don’t think they’re making the statement that this is the cause of every single health problem anyone’s ever had or will have in the future,” Thiesen said. “Does everyone get cancer? Not necessarily.”

Critics also suggest smart meters’ two-way communication will allow BC Hydro to monitor peak electricity usage times and charge more during those hours. Hydro has denied the claim.

Event organizer and Nicola Valley Safe Technology Advocates member Walter Vohradsky said smart meter installers use intimidation and coercion to get compliance.

“There are many, many elderly people who just do not have the wherewithal, the health, to continue this battle and they are caving in,” he said. “Being involved, I have personal experience with listening to ladies with husbands practically on their death beds, and they cannot deal with it.”

Thiesen said utility companies use acquiescence (reluctant acceptance without protest) to enter in to new contracts with their customers.

Vohradsky said the two-way communication in smart meters adds a new element to customers’ contract with BC Hydro that the utility corporation never received public input on.

“We are telling them no, we do not like that contract. We are very happy with the old contract,” Vohradsky said. “This is actually part and parcel with us as citizens in this province, this country, and everywhere to take back democracy. ‘Your power’ is kind of a play on words: not only your electricity, but your power as citizens of the world.”

One attendee called the contents of the presentation and the documentary “a conspiracy theory” and “fear-mongering.”

He said smart meters have internal memory and only need to pulse electricity use information back to BC Hydro a few times per day.

Thiesen asked him to leave the event and after a short verbal altercation, he left.

As of August, 7,300 smart meters had been installed in the Merritt billing area, which includes Merritt, Lower Nicola, Aspen Grove, Quilchena and Logan Lake. About 400 customers had refused, Hydro community relations manager Dag Sharman said.

About 1.8 million smart meters have been installed in B.C. so far, and about 60,000 customers have refused.