The smart move: Choose another battle

After two dueling public meetings in as many weeks on smart meters, little has changed. The only take-away here is that, hopefully, everyone realizes that enough is enough.

For months, a proportionately tiny group of utility customers in Burbank and Glendale has steadfastly maintained that smart meters — which track water and electricity usage in real time — cause illness and intrude on their privacy.

They have clung to these beliefs despite the assurances of numerous regulatory agencies and a lack of respected, widely accepted scientific data to back up the claims. Millions of smart meters have been installed across the nation, and more will follow. The time for raising hell, in the absence of any concrete data, has come and gone.

The entrenchment is not unlike the largely discredited groups that, despite evidence to the contrary, swear certain vaccines cause autism and other ailments in children. Decades later, misinformation continues to be spread; nothing has changed.

At some point, public officials must accept that no amount of coddling will do. For every data point, the opposition camp will create a counterpoint.

Like the most recent forum hosted by Glendale Water & Power, all an agency can do at a certain point is throw a Hail Mary public relations pass, hope it gets noticed, and move on with life. Because, except for a small group of naysayers, most everyone else has.