With Entergy proposing rate hikes for customers, New Orleans City Councilmember Amy McCarron argues that the company hasn’t proven to be reliable enough to justify those rate hikes.
According to McCarron, Entergy ranks in the bottom 25% when it comes to reliability and she points to a lack of continued upkeep of their equipment as a huge reason why.
“Their reliability is really bad. They’re in the of the country in reliability. That means power outages that happen in broad daylight or minor windstorms and rain. It’s due to equipment failures due to their lack of ongoing maintenance,” McCarron points out.
“We should be able to keep the power on in a minor thunderstorm. We know what the weather is here. We live in a tropical climate. Why do we continue to have these failures? And why is their reliability worse than it was the year before and the year before that and the year before that?” she went on to emphasize.
McCarron says she would like to see an accounting of what Entergy is spending its money on from what ratepayer dollars are already paying.
“People need to see progress. We have to stop being reactive and only replacing utility poles when they get hit by a car. There are poles across the city that are leaning and rotted out and we shouldn’t have to wait for those things to be proactively fixed,” added the city councilmember.
New Orleans' City Council has questions it wants answered first
