Testimony shows smart meter trouble

HOUSE BILL 243 (Grid Modernization Plans) introduced Jan. 31 would mandate smart meters throughout New Mexico . ...

This bill should be withdrawn and not supported because it is an environmental disaster. PNM’s application for smart meters, presently before the Public Regulation Commission, is scheduled for public hearings March 20-23. HB 243 is an attempt by PNM to circumvent the public process.

Hundreds of public comments have poured in to the PRC from around the world testifying to the catastrophic effects of smart meters on health and environment wherever they have been deployed. They are from people who knew nothing about smart meters and who, when smart meters were installed, were injured, disabled, made homeless, killed and exiled while simply living in their own homes. They testify to injuries and deaths to themselves and to their spouses, parents, children, neighbors, pets and to the birds, animals and plants in their yards and neighborhoods. Their stories are posted on the PRC’s website in Case 22-00058-UT.

The Grid Modernization Act of 2020 permits utilities to apply to the PRC for permission to deploy smart meters. HB 243 would make the filing of plans to deploy smart meters mandatory. This would tie the hands of the PRC and ... render the PRC unable to hear the public testimony in the present proceeding and act accordingly. The PRC would be virtually forced to approve a technology that has damaged the public health and despoiled the environment wherever it has been deployed. This bill would circumvent the process that has already defeated smart meters twice in this state. ARTHUR FIRSTENBERG

Santa Fe