Victor Odlivak for EWEB Commissioner AT-LARGE

Picture for Website Primary May 15th

Picture for Voters Pamphlett Primary May 15th

There will be one last campaign event at the First United Methodist Church at 1376 Olive St. on Tuesday May 8th 6:45 - 8:30 PM to have all three candidates present their views. There will also be opportunites for questions.

Endorsed by the local Our Revolution (Bernie Sander’s Eugene Group) on Saturday April 28, 2018. Freedom of Aerial Spraying Alliance (FAHA) and Our Community Our Rights (OCOR) also endorsed my campaign. This was recorded at the Our Revolution Meeting on April 14, 2018 in Eugene, Oregon.

For a longer more in depth interview of me please see April 21, 2018 recorded at the Cable TV Lane County channel 29 studio in Eugene by Joe Tyndall.

Here is the April 27, 2018 talk at the Eugene Garden Club.

Score Card for Primary

Victor received a total of 2604 votes representing 10.61 percent. Here is the Register-Guard Article. Thanks to all those who helped make this happen. I am so grateful !!


I, Victor Odlivak am running for EWEB Commissioner AT-LARGE position in the May 2018 primary in Eugene. I have worked for the last eleven years to stop smart meters in both Seattle and Eugene with the Families for Safe Technology. I was so fed up with the reversing of the OPT-OUT to automatic OPT-IN policy that I am running to make an effort to change this and educate people. Note, this is a complete reversal of what was stated at the video at the City Club from Feb. 17, 2017 . Frank Lawson says at the 47:00 minute mark that he is all for the automatic opt-out policy. He has totally reversed himself not listening to the people. See the EWEB Smart Meter FAQ which states the new policy: "If I opt out can I keep my old meter?
No. We are replacing all meters in our service territory over the next eight years. If you choose to opt out, the radio in the new meters at your residence will be disabled.."

The important thing to realize is that Smart Meters are a big distraction from our real task which is to Get off Fossil Fuels . For a historical perspective, please see this AMI 2015 document from EWEB . Note in particular on Page 3 under Discussion: EWEB is presently "capacity (kW) resource short" and relies exclusively on the marketplace today to meet these shortages. We do not want to rely on the market place. We want to be the source of energy as ratepayer owner generators with more solar and greater energy conservation for all. How do we do this??

Here is a preview of my election pamphlett statement. All of New Mexico just decided to get off the Smart Meter/AMI bandwagon because of the problems I mentioned in my later section Dumbness of Smart Meters. See the article from Santa Fe, NM Newspaper. We need to follow the example of New Mexico.

Mission Statement

I will devote myself fully to implementing the policy I have layed out above. This will include office hours at EWEB for people to visit outside of normal work times. Since I am retired, I have the time to spend 10 days a month or more to follow through and research any agenda items for board meetings. I want to thoroughly investigate exactly where our energy and money is going.

Action Plan

Please remember the goal Reduce Fossil Fuel , not spending 200 million Dollars over the next five years on Smart Meters. You can read later on this page about the Dumbness of so called Smart Meters

My Experience

I am currently retired and have been working the last 6 years as the volunteer treasurer for ASALV , a non-profit for rehabilitating street children in Nicaragua. I also volunteer with Community Rights Lane County working on the banning of Aerial Herbicide Spray and giving mother nature the rights of a person.

I have a B.A. in physics from Earlham College in Richmond, IN. and spent six months studying Appropriate Technology at the   Farallones Institue   when it was in Occidental, CA in 1983. This included Wind, Solar, Hydro Power and Biogas. I worked two years as a high school physics teacher and 25 plus years in tech support in the computer field. This included working with wind, solar and hydro power energy forecasting at 3Tier Inc. (now Vaisala) In 1985 - 1989, our volunteer group set up the entire recycling operation for Watertown, MA including building the ramps and bridge to load up the glass and metal containers.

Dumbness of so called Smart Meters

Not much is generally known about Smart Meters. First of all they are not at all smart. Some of the things they do are:

  1. Smart Meters/AMI greately complicate the process of measuring owner-ratepayer’s energy usage. This was said by Frank Lawson in the video at the City Club from Feb. 17, 2017 . Frank Lawson says at the 39:00 minute mark that EWEB should stress four principles safety , reliablility, affordablility and not making things complicated. We are just asking him to follow his own advice here.
  2. Smart Meters are not financially viable. The Smart Meters are only guaranteed for 2 - 10 years verses 40 - 60 years for the analog. They require setting up Time of Use Billing, antennas, transmitters and other equipment. An outside vendor would have to set up a computer system for the Time of Use Billing. The city would then be at the mercy of that vendor for any changes to the system. The actual energy savings from Smart Meters is null for the average household. Nobody is going to get up at 3 AM to run their dishwasher or do their cooking. Our sister city Springfield, OR on the other side of the river decided to hold off on deploying AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure) at this time. They will not presently (March 15, 2018) according to Jeff Nelson (SUB Manager) be setting up Time of Use Billing, antennas, transmitters and other equipment. They want to take more time and see how AMI develops.
  3. Burst into fire or CUT OFF POWER instantly . This has happened so often that Saskatchewan Province in Canada has outlawed them. Note, the fix for this that EWEB implemented is to buy the "smarter" Smart Meters made by Sensus. If they get too hot, they automatically shut off! But what if you are asleep at night with a medical device to breath more Oxygen into your lungs . Many people suffering from Emphysema have this. Are we going to immediately dispatch people there to turn on a backup generator for the household? Do we have several hundred personnel ready at all times to do this? The old mechanical Analog meters never got too hot and cut off power. We are setting ourselves up for a very horrific situation here! I asked Frank Lawson in person with our entire Families for Safe Meters group, if they have a data base with all the people on ventilators and what medical procedures they have in an event of a Smart Meter shutoff. They had no answer to this!!
  4. Cause on average utility rates to go up by 50 percent after installation.
  5. Put out an immense amount of Microwave Radiation in the 1 - 300 Gigahertz bandwidth. The energy of the radiation is 10 K what your cell phone emits. This is a major health hazard . This causes massive headaches in people, dizziness, nausea and cases of brain cancer have been documented. In the film mentioned below, all the birds that a gentleman in Renton was feeding suddenly disappeared from the area, once the smart meters were installed. If you can not go to the performance of the film, you can download it and just pay whatever you like. Please see the website also referenced below. Thank you !!
  6. Monitor all your activities in your home and invade your privacy.

You can read more about it in this two page pamphlet please: page 1           page 2

There is a lot of confusion out there between Smart Grid and Smart Meters (AMI) . They are totally different things and have nothing to do with each other. The idea of a Smart Grid is to get us all using renewable energy generated locally for maximum efficiency as opposed to monopoly fossil fuel power companies controlling the price and distribution. For more info, read this excellent report created by Dr. Tim Schoechle, who invented Smart Meters and now speaks out against them.

If you are in the Seattle or Pacific Northwest USA, please see here for more information.

There are various showings wherever you live of the film Take Back your Power. Please see the take back your power website mentioned here