BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — The East Baton Rouge Metro Council wants more accountability and answers from Entergy Louisiana on the recent power outages and higher-than-normal bills.
More than 4,000 people were affected by the large amount of power outages on Tuesday in Baton Rouge. Louisiana State University canceled its second day of class, and other schools were affected. Businesses shut down operations early due to the second breaking heat without air conditioning.
The neighborhoods affected by the outages Tuesday, were Broadmoor, Sherwood Forest and University Plantation.
On Wednesday, Councilwoman Carolyn Coleman introduced an item to bring in officials from Entergy Louisiana.
“Why? Why the power outages?” asked Coleman. “You look around and Entergy is out. Electricity is off.”
Vice President of Customer Service for Entergy Louisiana Michelle Bourg said Entergy wants to provide answers for the council and the people within the parish. Alongside Bourg at the podium was Entergy’s Senior Manager of Distribution Operations Traye Granger.
“We absolutely take seriously, to provide a reliable, safe, and affordable way,” said Bourg. “We’re committed to providing our customers, with the service that they deserve and to acknowledge that we believe we can improve.”
Council members Coleman, Jennifer Racca and Daryl Hurst continued to press harder for answers from Entergy regarding outages, higher bills and broken street lights.
“You all don’t give us any breaks on our bills,” said Coleman. “So why should we give any breaks for energy.”
Racca claims the council has received multiple phone calls from residents regarding the poor service from Entergy.
“Here we are yet again and the vendor is not doing what the vendor is supposed to do,” said Racca. “And making sure vendors what they contracted to do, and are paid for to do should not be our major concern.”
Hurst spoke more regarding the city contract with Entergy which hasn’t been updated in over 60 years. Many within the council that the contract needs to be updated.
“If the contract would have been up,” said Hurst. “I would have called Demco and every other company in America to come here and to take your lines from you.”
Hurst expressed his concern that with the power outages and the majority of the 38,000 street light posts not fixed, crime would increase in his district.
“So my question is accountability,” said Hurst. “Cause if I get a call saying my son was shot because there was no lighting out there, and nobody can identify the shooter, what am I suppose to tell my constituents?”
Due to the excessive heat, Entergy announced they paused all disconnections during Gov. John Bel Edwards’ state of emergency until Sept. 9.
Entergy explained the LSU power outage, saying the generator was offline and happened to have one of their transmission lines out of service.
According to Bourg, transmission lines were out of service because of “doing some proactive capital renewal.”
Coleman pressed harder for more answers from Bourg, wanting to know more about the surrounding buildings in the area not having power.
“Perhaps there was another issue,” said Bourg “That’s the specifics I can’t speak on up here.”
Entergy also explains how many of the outages over the last several months have happened.
“We got storms, the effects the Mother Nature, which has been unrelenting to us lately,” said Bourg. “We have public infected damage, which we got drivers running off the roads and hitting our polls. “
Many people in the audience took to the podium to express their concerns. A pastor talked about paying for lights for two buildings, saying one of his structures went from $400 to $800, the second went from $800 to $1,000.
Two business owners said they had to close business early due to no air conditioning. Another businessman said he had 12 power outages in less than four months and doesn’t believe that the weather plays a part in his losing electricity.
Another businesswoman said she had to close her shop five hours early due to not wanting her employees to sit inside a 100-degree office building. She mentions how every other week, the power goes out without any warning.
“I pay my energy bill every month. We have no result and we can’t continue business without power,” she said.
The Metro Council demanded that Entergy provide a report on the progress they have made in fixing the issues. They hope to have that report in the next 10 days.
