The following was provided to the South Lake Tahoe City Council on Tuesday, and reprinted here at the author’s request.

My name is Heather Cade-Bauer, and I am a resident of the city of South Lake Tahoe.

We have lived in our home for twenty-five years, and as others have mentioned, utility rates have gone out of control. We have witnessed our Liberty rates triple over the past five years. To Ms. Soderstrom’s point, I have reported a tree hitting a pole outside our house during high-wind events for at least fifteen years, and Liberty has done nothing.

With that said, I would like to address Liberty Utilities’ recent rollout of “smart” meters across our city. I know the Council may draft a protest letter to the CPUC regarding Liberty’s rate increases and the closure of the local service center. I am urging you to expand that protest to include the severe fire safety risks and the “opt-out” fees associated with these new smart meters.

We live in a high fire danger area. Every piece of equipment attached to our homes in the Tahoe Basin must be scrutinized. Liberty claims these meters improve “situational awareness,” but they often ignore the physical vulnerability of the devices, while it honestly seems they are trying to increase profit margins by not having to employ meter readers.

Unlike analog meters, these electronic “smart” meters typically lack internal surge arrestors and circuit breakers. When a utility surge occurs, these meters can become an “open portal” for high voltage entering our home’s wiring.

Many of our homes have older electrical “sockets” that were never designed for the continuous, high-frequency digital pulse of a smart meter. This leads to “hot sockets,” arcing, creating opportunities for catastrophic failure. Our community cannot afford a meter-initiated fire. Why is Liberty forcing this technology onto our older housing stock without a mandatory, independent safety inspection of every meter base?

Then, there is the “Opt-Out” fee. Currently, Liberty is charging over $50 a month to opt-out from having a “smart” meter installed. For many of our citizens, this is not a “choice”; it is a penalty! We are essentially being told that if we want to avoid a potential fire hazard and protect our data privacy, we must pay over an additional fee of over $600 a year. As a renter and utility ratepayer, I was never notified of the option to “opt-out,” and a smart meter was installed with little notice. One day, a guy knocked on my door and said he was doing something to our meter.

I have two specific requests for your letter to the CPUC:

  1. Demand a Fee-Free Opt-Out: No resident of South Lake Tahoe should be charged a monthly fee to maintain the safety and privacy of our homes.
  2. Independent Safety Review: Demand that Liberty and its contractor halt installations until a third-party fire safety audit is conducted on the compatibility of these “smart” meters within our infrastructure.

We struggle with the threat of wildfires within our area; we should not have to worry about a fire starting on the side of our homes because of a “smart” upgrade we didn’t ask for.