Lights out, again!
28th March 2022 · 0 Comments
We share the sorrow of victims of the recent tornado that leveled houses in Arabi, La.; we share the pain of those without electricity because, as usual, lights go out whenever there is a natural disaster.
Earlier this month, the lights went out at one charter school twice. Before noon, parents and guardians had to pick up students.
In New Orleans, lights might go out in schools, residences, and businesses at any given time. Hard rain, natural disasters, or even birds or squirrels that damage above-ground power lines can cause blackouts.
Not only are residents inconvenienced by blackouts – the sick and shut-in, elderly, babies and anyone who relies on Entergy for electricity – we also suffer the cost for repairs.
High electricity and gas bills are the norms. An Entergy customer in New Orleans may pay between $300 and $500 during any given month. The average bill is estimated to be $135.00. One business owner complained to WDSU-TV that she had received an ENO bill for $1,000.
Residents have complained about high utility bill costs for decades. The issue of Entergy New Orleans’ (ENO) billing spawned headlines after Hurricane Ida last year. Ida wreaked havoc on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. According to one report, 30,000 utility poles needed replacements.
New Orleans’ low-income residents face one of the highest energy burdens in the U.S., second only to Memphis, Tenn., according to a 2016 study from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. That means half the city’s low-income households spend more than 9.8 percent of their earnings on energy, and a quarter of them pay more than 18.9 percent. On average, households nationwide pay about 3.5 percent of their income, NPR and ProPublica reported in 2021.
Reports say Entergy customers will pay anywhere from $8 to $11 throughout this decade and into the next to pay $4.4 billion in damages caused by whatever.
Our question is, why? Why do New Orleans residents have to pay for damages they didn’t cause? Isn’t it ENO’s responsibility to pay for the damages? After all, Entergy is raking in billions from consumers. Entergy revenue for the twelve months ending September 30, 2021, was $11.391B, an 11.61 percent increase year-over-year, according to NOLA.com.
Entergy shouldn’t be allowed to pass on the costs of damages each and every time because of its own decisions not to upgrade its electric grid or bury cables underground.
Above-ground power lines are dangerous and could be deadly. Still, ENO refuses to bury its power lines underground because it would cost at least $4.1 billion. And that’s a cost ENO is not willing to pay.
Entergy’s refusal to take responsibility for what happens to its customers is akin to the plantation politics of old.
Never mind that the enslaved must work whether they are sick or not, whether they endure heat stroke or have no electricity. Too bad. They must still pay the master, with their labor, for the meager cabin and sackcloth they are allowed to use.
Entergy is an overseer, a monopoly that charges whatever the New Orleans City Council allows it to charge.
ENO customers pay much more than other Louisianans for electricity and gas. A Natchitoches resident says her utilities cost $45 per month for a 1,600-square-foot home. That’s because that resident has a choice of providers, and the Public Service Commission regulates those companies. ENO charges aside, everyone knows that burying the utility cables underground is the right thing to do.
Cost not safety or continuity of electrical service is why power lines are not underground in the U.S. Burying them below ground would eliminate the electrocution danger created by downed power wires and prevent or minimize outages during storms, according to Electrocuted.com.
NOLA.com reported that a research paper published by Edison Electric Institute concluded that it costs about $1 million per mile to bury electric distribution lines compared with $100,000 per mile for above-ground lines.
The New Orleans City Council has failed for decades to hold ENO accountable for over-billing, and passing on the costs of damages to its electrical grid to New Orleanians has us looking side-eyed at the current New Orleans City Council.
If the French Quarter doesn’t have above-ground utility lines, and it’s in the oldest part of the city, why can’t cables be buried underground in low-income neighborhoods?
To their credit, members of the City Council’s Utility, Cable, Telecommunications, and Technology Committee investigated ENO in 2017 and fined the company for 2,600 outages in 2016. Entergy sued the City Council because of the fine, and that case is still pending in the courts.
Last September, Helena Moreno, president of the New Orleans City Council and chairperson of its Utility Committee, announced a resolution to study the future ownership of the electric and gas operations in the New Orleans, including municipalization, or a city-owned and managed utility.
Entergy’s response to the committee’s resolution showed the company’s fear of not being able to pass on storm restoration costs to consumers and a freeze on billing rates.
While we admire and appreciate the City Council’s Utility Committee’s attempt to hold ENO accountable, we think more than a resolution is needed to protect the quality of life of the city’s low-income residents and elderly who live on fixed incomes.
We agree with President Joe Biden, who suggested that the utility cables be buried underground on a visit to Louisiana after Hurricane Ida.
We will see what city leaders and New Orleanians on Capitol Hill and in the White House do to bring the city’s electric grid into the 21st century. Twentieth-century energy technology and above-ground utility poles are passé. Albert Einstein said it best, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
New Orleanians need relief from skyrocketing utility bills, and they need it now.
This article originally published in the March 28, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
