California Water Authorities Using Smart Meter Data as Evidence to Impose Fines

Melissa Melton
Activist Post

The smart grid isn’t coming. It’s already here.

Everywhere people’s houses are being fitted if they already haven’t with smart electric meters and smart water meters. These meters communicate real-time usage data via radio frequency (which comes with its own set of health problems).

Essentially, consumption of utilities in your home is being big brother tracked and traced at all times on the smart grid.

Sure, it was sold to everyone as a “smart” solution for keeping consumption in check, that it would decrease utility bills because people could use it to check out how much they use and find smart ways to cut down. (How many people are really even doing that, by the way?)

Not only is this going to be used to serve up “peak pricing” models against the population — to price electricity and water higher during times of higher consumption by the population — it’s also going to be used to allow the people to tattle on themselves via their data, a set up that will come with heavy financial consequences.

As we can see happening now in California during its historic drought, smart meters are also being used by authorities to seek people out and impose fines.

CBS Los Angeles is reporting that water authorities are using smart meters against “water wasters”:

Water authorities are using a new tool in a major effort to crack down on people and businesses wasting water in light of new water restrictions issued by Gov. Jerry Brown to fight the drought.

The Long Beach Water Department says sprinklers at a McDonald’s restaurant on Bellflower Boulevard went on for 45 minutes at a time, twice a night, for an undefined number of nights. Complaints continued to mount as water pooled and wasted. The department, however, could do little about the wasting.


That was before the smart meter.

Since its installation in February, Long Beach Water Department General Manager Kevin Wattier says he saw an immediate spike by tens of thousands of gallons, each time McDonald’s overwatered their property.

“It collects the data every five minutes, then after midnight, the cellphone that’s built in here comes on, makes one call, and calls it in to the database that we and the customer, through a password security system, have online access to their consumption,” Wattier said. [emphasis added]

The punchline?

Using this data, Wattier knew the precise moment to send his employees to videotape the infractions to use as evidence.

“We are using it specifically for an enforcement tool to go after those customers who we’ve gotten lots of complaints about,” Wattier said.

In this case, it’s McDonald’s, and while McDonald’s may suck for a bevy of reasons that have nothing to do with its water usage, it isn’t like this technology is only going to be used against crappy corporations. It’s going to be used against everyone, right down to the little old lady that forgot her sprinkler was on last Tuesday.

And those fines, depending on the area, can be $500 a day.

Or what if you hate that little old lady and, as a neighbor who is out to get someone, you decide to leave her sprinkler on for her? What a payback.

Could that happen? You see, the propaganda surrounding the drought has already turned a lot of Californians against each other.

A social media campaign #droughtshaming started by authorities in some cities seeks to get people to photograph and film “water wasters” and shame them on social media. The “evidence” gathered can then be used by authorities to impose fines on people as well. One of the guys in the article I wrote about was filming people’s homes at night and putting the videos up on YouTube. One of the videos he put up had the wrong address.

Meanwhile, 80% of water in California goes to mega agriculture operations, including Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). Cities are still selling millions of gallons of water for pennies on the dollar to megacorporations like Nestlé to bottle and sell. So the 20% of people left who are tattling on their neighbors for leaving a sprinkler on for an extra half hour that’s not really going to change anything just by the way.

Question: while the system is busy turning neighbors into angry snitches and using smart meters to impose heavy fines on everyone, is any of this making more water? 

Is all that money making more rain happen? Or is it just making more money for cash-strapped municipalities? Are they going to take all those fines and do something about the situation or just make bank?

In the meantime, the smart grid is doing exactly what it was always designed to: keeping everyone tracked, traced, financially trapped and strapped, and under the thumb of the establishment’s ever-watching eye.

Melissa Melton is a writer, researcher, and analyst for The Daily Sheeple, where this article first appeared, and a co-creator of Truthstream Media with Aaron Dykes, a site that offers teleprompter-free, unscripted analysis of The Matrix we find ourselves living in. Melissa also co-founded Nutritional Anarchy with Daisy Luther of The Organic Prepper, a site focused on resistance through food self-sufficiency. Wake the flock up!


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20 Comments on "California Water Authorities Using Smart Meter Data as Evidence to Impose Fines"

  1. People need to realize this is just an example of the run away greed.
    When your business is so flawed that you destroy your own base it should be a sure sign of insanity.
    When everyone is broke and destitute who is going to pay the bills?

    The incompetents in charge haven’t a clue and won’t worry about the disaster they are creating until it’s too late.

    When your business model is cannibalistic you eventually eat yourself.

    • Maybe the uber rich people actually realize that the ONLY reason money has value is because you pretend it does. It is literally, ONLY a thought, an unspoken agreement.

      i know people that refuse to work for money. For those people $$$s have no value. They exchange skills, time, barter, etc.

  2. Hey our rural county in SC ; in an effort to raise more funds floated the idea of metering PRIVATE WELLS !. Over my dead body. They didn’t pay to dig it, maintain it, fix it when it breaks or test it for contaminants but they want to profit from it? Not likely mate.
    As far as droughts go, everyone should get a large rainwater collection tank and if you live in a fascist state that prohibits this CHANGE the LAW!. I have two gravity fed ones 1500gal ea. & ONE INCH of rain puts 500 gal in EACH tank. In the SE rain is very acidic but you can add soda ash for cheap & use it to water gardens, wash clothes, flush toilets etc. It is best to not have asphalt shingles if you plan to drink it or use it for livestock. Steel or tile roofing is better.
    If somebody were to start a business installing these tanks I predict they would be quite successful.

    If you can afford to install photovoltaic cells for electricity know this: If you are connected to the grid for “net metering” when the grid goes down so will your solar. Make sure your electrician installs a way to switch it to independent use. Better yet, unless you are making a profit in AZ or CA , don’t connect at all. In SC they charge you a monthly fee for the “privilege” of having solar & their net metering was forced on them as the last to join. They sell you power at retail & buy it back wholesale which is during peak periods so this should be the opposite.
    If you are not smart metered yet put a lock box on your meter. Do not buy smart appliances. I can’t live in the city because of all the wifi & cell towers & toxic chlorine/ammonia/fluoride water. My kids & grand kids just do not understand that they are the frogs in the slowly boiling pot.

    • Frances McCandless | April 8, 2015 at 4:08 pm |

      Great advice. thanks for the post

    • Thank you for the advice. I have asphalt singles and decided to check it out and here is what I found:

      There are some startling results that might be concluded from this
      table. It appears that gravel and asphalt shingles are a good choice
      for roofing material. Indeed, there is a study by P. C. Van Metre, and
      B. J. Mahler; http://tx.usgs.gov/coring/pubs/rooftops%20Chemosphere.pdf
      in Texas, as well as Jürgen Förster in Germany, that suggest that the
      fillers and texture of these types of roofs reduce heavy metals and PAH
      runoff. PAH’s are Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons. There are about
      100 chemicals that fit in this category. Most are carcinogenic and
      tend to be made from two to six benzene rings. The 2 and 3ring PAH’s
      are usually from raw organic materials like oil, coal, and decomposing
      organic material. The 4 and 5 ring PAH’s are from burning organic
      material like forest fires, home heaters, engine exhaust and even meat
      on your grill. It was widely thought that PAH’s were coming from
      deteriorating asphalt shingles on homes (2 and 3 ring PAH’s). Metre and
      Mayler have evidence that the PAH’s coming off asphalt roofs are no
      more than what comes off of a metal roof. This suggests that PAH’s are
      deposited on roofs and not sourced from roof material deterioration.

  3. Wrap a copper pot scrubber (Chore Boy) around your smart meter and no signals can be sent.

  4. i am taking extra long showers and baths since CA water restriction

    • Since learning about starving children, I am eating more than I need to and wasting as much food as possible. Since learning of global warming and that methane is 90 times more intense a greenhouse gas, I am eating a steady diet of beans and farting up a storm. This is true protest!

  5. Is there a way to generate a high energy pulse that would make the smart meter inoperable?

    • Build an ionic ray gun from YouTube channel.

    • i saw a video about making an EMP from a disposable camera. That is like a small scale electromagnetic pulse like a nuke. It would for instance – wipe out a cop’s tazer if one were close enough. At least i believe so – any computer close by will fry, but what is the range of that little thing – AND can it fire off multiple times or does it fry itself when it shoots off? Inquiring minds want to know…..

      Theory behind copper scrubber around the smartmeter is to interfere with it’s signal. It is like the braided outside line on a cable – that prevents signals from outside causing snow in the picture signal and prevents the electromagnetics in the signal from interfering with OTHER devices.

      If you fry your meter make sure you don’t do your car, computer, etc.

      Look up Faraday cage for the principle.

  6. Take a hammer to the meters?

  7. All those poor RICH FOLK what will they do if they cannot get their Limos washed?

  8. Well, in this case McDs DOES suck because of it’s water usage.

    Back in the WORSE Calif drought – 70s/80ish – (MUCH worse drought) it drove me crazy to see all these old farts watering THEIR SIDEWALK – yes – specifically their sidewalk to keep it clean from the blown agricultural dust in El Centro.

    Kind of glad that McDs got their’s, but in general think govt control of resources is retarded, dangerous, and BAD.

  9. California – more crooked politicians than all of the other states in the union put together. This is just another crooked way to tax and control the people of California. California has, for many many years, refused to build reservoirs to catch natural water from snow melt and rains. That was because the “green” environmentalists is southern California, you know who they are – the movie stars and Hollywood people, didn’t want those nasty reservoirs that might be good for the average working class people to use for recreation. Instead, they constructed a canal system to steal water from the Northern California river systems and divert it to Southern California, which was a very limited fix and resulted in removing the water supply for Northern California. In addition to that, they have allowed private companies, such as the East Bay Municipal Water District, to have absolute control over water reservoirs which allows them to dump excess water from the reservoirs in order to create a water shortage situation in which they can then charge a higher price for the water that actually belongs to the people of California. Sorry people, when you allow the fruits and nuts to run the government, this is what you get. You had better wise up. Government control of your lives is not a pleasant thing, and you still have the ability to change that if you will.

  10. A good example that shows how everything is connected and the power the geoengineers of God, which are also the money printer of God, really have.
    What I will probably never understand: why seem to see nobody that this drought is engineered?
    The climate lie is the biggest lie of all times and the crimes while “saving” the climate are incredible, and yet most people don’t know or don’t care it seems.

  11. US war on water wasters with troops all over the world is coming nearer.
    Soon you will go to jail if waste a drop of water too much or cannot explain what you did with the holy water.

  12. remember you get what and who you vote for
    enjoy kalifornistan

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