NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — For New Orleans residents like Cheryl Stovall, power outages have become more common.
“When it hardly rains, it goes out from time to time, depending on the wind circumstances. Once the power went out, we just stayed around,” said Stovall.
Soon, New Orleans Entergy customers will notice citywide upgrades to their electrical grid, totaling $106 million to replace and improve the city’s poles, power lines and transmission equipment. Backed by federal funding and Entergy, Councilman Oliver Thomas says this will create a stronger power infrastructure.
“Finally, some great news about a public utility in the city of New Orleans. With all of the challenges we have had with outages lately, weather patterns, systems going down,” said Thomas.
Thomas explains the council ensured the project would not be costly for residents. On average, the projects will only increase utility costs by $0.20 per month in 2024, with a 1.52 monthly increase by 2027.
“$0.20 to go a long way to hardening our system. Protecting our electric lines and distribution and transmission lines and making sure a lot of these outages and system failures won’t happen,” said Thomas.
The council also asked that reports be provided to the public, which residents agree should happen. They hope for them is constant outages will be a thing of the past.
“That would be wonderful that they would do it because we wouldn’t have to experience it over and over again,” said Stovall.
“New Orleans is one of the last old strongholds. I think it’s good it’s a good idea, anything to improve the city. It needs a little upgrade.”
Entergy says it’s grateful to the council for their approval of the first of many projects needed to harden the grid and make our city safer,” said Jeffery Passalino.
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