When Hurricane Ida struck the state of Louisiana last month, nine people died because of "excessive heat during an extended power outage.” Residents like Wilma Banks, a former casino employee with cognitive heart disease and asthma, were dependent on their utility company to support them by powering their medical devices and HVAC systems during this time of need. But as days went on after the eye of the storm ripped through homes and livelihoods, power wasn’t restored.
Sadly, an investigation found that prior to the storm, Ms. Banks’ utility company, Entergy, “aggressively resisted efforts by regulators, residents and advocates to improve its infrastructure. The company's restoration of its equipment after major storms didn't prioritize the grid modernization that industry experts say could limit the scope and duration of power outages. And instead of shifting toward renewable energy, Entergy doubled down on building plants that emit greenhouse gases — the same pollution that makes hurricanes bigger and wetter.”
Perhaps most sobering is that even in a state like Louisiana, where some of the nation’s most sever and unforgiving natural disasters hit, Entergy’s building stood tall over the city when one million residents remained without power for days on end.
Read the whole investigation at NPR or an excerpt below.
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“By the time Banks was rushed to the intensive care unit on Sept. 3, high heat and humidity still blanketed the city. Entergy New Orleans (ENO), the local subsidiary, had failed to restore power to more than 80% of customers, many of them too poor or frail to evacuate. Of the 14 deaths in New Orleans attributed so far to Hurricane Ida, nine were from "excessive heat during an extended power outage," the Orleans Parish coroner found. Another two people died from carbon monoxide poisoning as families used generators to power their homes.
When residents and city officials pressed ENO about the catastrophic power failure, company executives explained that the outages could not have been avoided during a big storm like Hurricane Ida. But an investigation by ProPublica and NPR finds that the utility, along with its parent company, Entergy, failed to take the necessary steps to protect its power grid and customers against outages, despite opportunities to rebuild with more resilient systems after several big hurricanes.
For years, Entergy has aggressively resisted efforts by regulators, residents and advocates to improve its infrastructure. The company's restoration of its equipment after major storms didn't prioritize the grid modernization that industry experts say could limit the scope and duration of power outages. And instead of shifting toward renewable energy, Entergy doubled down on building plants that emit greenhouse gases — the same pollution that makes hurricanes bigger and wetter.
Entergy New Orleans is uniquely positioned among American utilities to protect its interests because of how it's regulated. The subsidiary is one of only two investor-owned utilities overseen by a city council; utilities typically are regulated by a state-level commission. That setup has often left the New Orleans City Council without sufficient resources and expertise to effectively regulate the monopoly electric utility, according to interviews with some residents, councilmembers and former city officials.
Drawing on data, corporate filings, public records and interviews with more than two dozen sources, ProPublica and NPR found that unless ENO and its parent company, Entergy, make bold investments in New Orleans' aging grid, extreme storms fueled by climate change will bring more dangerous and prolonged outages. The power failure after Ida shows that many low-income residents, who often can't afford to evacuate, would face outsize harm from outages, jeopardizing their financial stability and exposing medically fragile individuals to suffering.
Entergy declined to answer most of ProPublica and NPR's questions or grant interviews with its top executives. Entergy spokesperson Jerry Nappi said in a statement that Entergy, which serves 3 million customers in four Southern states, has invested more than $6 billion in its Louisiana transmission and distribution systems since the beginning of 2016. Nappi added that the utility is now pursuing federal funding to further modernize its grid and is "actively working" toward reducing carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.
"While ensuring the resilience of our infrastructure has always been a primary emphasis, we must accelerate our efforts in light of increasingly frequent and severe weather events," Nappi said.
Five independent energy and environment experts who reviewed the findings of ProPublica and NPR's investigation said that ENO and its parent company, which made a record profit of $1.4 billion in 2020, had failed in recent years to reduce the scope of harm that a storm like Ida could cause. They expressed concerns over the utility's insufficient grid investments, spending cuts for routine maintenance and overstatement of equipment capabilities to supply reliable power after storms. As a result, local officials were left to reckon with a stark reality: The most vulnerable New Orleans residents were left powerless by the city's most powerful company.
"I don't think that New Orleans residents should accept a company not acting in their best interest," said Destenie Nock, assistant professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. "Entergy should have an obligation to make sure that its customers have reliable power."
The Entergy building, seen from Magnolia Street in the Central City area of New Orleans.
Entergy had chances after hurricanes to rebuild better
The morning of Aug. 30, the day after Hurricane Ida hit, New Orleans City Council President Helena Moreno passed fallen trees and felled utility poles on her way to Avondale, a nearby suburb on the west bank of the Mississippi River. A short while earlier, ENO's top executive had told the City Council that all eight of the city's transmission lines had failed. As the chair of the committee that regulates the utility, Moreno was skeptical that the grid had been storm ready. Past the old Avondale shipyard, she spotted an Entergy transmission tower that had buckled, its power lines ripped from the sky.
At the foot of the tower, a TV reporter asked her if Entergy had spent enough to prepare for Ida. "Look, this may have been such a strong, horrible storm that nothing could've prevented what went wrong," said Moreno, a former journalist who covered Hurricane Katrina. "But for all eight to fail? I'm wondering if it could have been prevented."
If the company didn't provide a full explanation about the outage, she thought, the City Council would need to find those answers.
When Hurricane Gustav struck the Gulf Coast in 2008 and left more than 100,000 Louisiana customers without power for over a week, Entergy's grid across the state was in shambles. Only one of Entergy's transmission lines serving New Orleans survived. Dillard University professor Robert Collins, an expert in disaster planning, said ENO had a rare opportunity after Gustav to collect from its customers billions of dollars to modernize its grid, an ambitious project that would mirror the $14.5 billion rebuild of its levees following Katrina.
"We are going to have future storms," then-Gov. Bobby Jindal warned after Gustav. "It makes sense to prepare our infrastructure so that we don't have these extended outages."
After Hurricane Ida hit, ENO's top executive told the New Orleans City Council that all eight of the city's transmission lines had failed.
ENO's parent company, Entergy, provides power in a region uniquely prone to extreme weather. Massive costs have followed each hurricane: up to $600 million after Gustav in 2008, $500 million for Isaac in 2012, $1.7 billion for Laura in 2020 and, that same year, $250 million for Zeta.
Each wave of repairs has resurfaced questions about whether Entergy is doing enough to build a more resilient grid. In a 2019 climate report, Entergy described a five-year plan for its companies to invest "billions of dollars ... in grid modernization and resiliency." Nappi told NPR and ProPublica that ENO has invested nearly $30 million in distribution system upgrades since the beginning of 2020.
But in New Orleans, the power goes out in some areas during downpours and even on sunny days. In the spring of 2017, residents complained so often about outages that the City Council launched an investigation. It found that more than a third of nearly 2,600 outages in the prior year were caused by equipment failures.
ENO blamed the problems on everything from aging infrastructure to squirrels. But councilmembers also found that ENO had slashed spending for equipment upgrades and had diverted funds earmarked for basic repairs. In 2019, the City Council fined ENO $1 million for its "inaction and omissions in mitigating" those outages. ENO responded with a lawsuit, alleging the council "unlawfully" levied the fine and "disregarded" evidence that showed the company acted responsibly. The case is still pending.”