Smart meter foes fight installation; call for oversight

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Updated: March 23, 2012 8:26AM

Opponents of smart meters being installed in Naperville are not giving up the fight against the program.

About 57,000 meters are being installed around the city as part of the Smart Grid Initiative, which the city says will be an upgrade to the current electrical system.

Some members of Naperville Smart Meter Awareness, which has raised objections to the meters because of health and privacy issues, spoke to the City Council Tuesday night.

“Smart meters pose risks in the areas of privacy, costs, security and health and are not federally mandated,” Naperville resident Tom Glass said.

Naperville resident Jerry Schilling read an impassioned speech to council members, charging that the city “is deliberately hiding cost overruns with respect to installation and support of smart meters.”

“We believe an independent audit of materials and labor charged to various city cost centers and electrical funds” should be done to show where the money is going, Schilling said.

“We believe this city government needs the active review and oversight of involved citizens,” he said.

Naperville resident Mike Anderson was among more than 100 individuals who sat in the City Council chambers as the public forum on the issue lasted for more than 30 minutes Tuesday night. Anderson said he is an electrical engineer and that he actually sells smart meter technology.

“My issue with the smart meters is that I personally don’t feel they’ve been fully vetted as yet,” Anderson said. “Personally, I feel as though Naperville continues to be the guinea pig. We can be proud we’re always asked to introduce new technology, but the problem is people keep coming to us for test cases and we keep accepting it.”

The chambers emptied when a pro-smart meter speaker addressed the council at the end of the public comment period.

City Manager Doug Krieger said that “the city believes the meters are safe and secure.”

“We would not move forward unless we believed this was safe and efficient, and that is based on reading hundreds to thousands of pages of evidence,” Krieger said. “We’ve not heard any evidence here tonight that contradicts that.”