The Council opened docket UD-17-04 in 2017 to investigate Entergy’s decision to defer maintenance and upgrades to its distribution system. The Council, as the utility’s regulator, concluded that Entergy had acted imprudently and penalized the company accordingly. Entergy immediately filed suit for injunctive relief, claiming that the Council had not created reliability standards to which it could be held accountable.
In fact, Entergy’s reliability declined significantly in 2021 compared to previous years. New Orleanians are familiar with Entergy’s repeated blaming of birds for fair-weather workday outages, and residents of New Orleans East had an unexplained overnight outage as recently as May 28-29, 2022.
While we have not yet been able to review a written judgment, Judge Johnson’s Monday ruling is a major impediment to the Council’s ability to regulate Entergy effectively and enforce meaningful penalties for the utility’s repeated failures, such as during Winter Storm Uri in 2021. Though finding Entergy’s actions during that storm were “substandard”, the Council’s utility advisors failed to recommend any sanction against the company that left thousands freezing in the dark with no warning. The New Orleans Ratepayer’s Bill of Rights, enshrined in the New Orleans Municipal Code, guarantees Entergy customers safe and reliable service. Does that describe the service you receive from Entergy New Orleans?
