Back in March of last year, we thought this NOLA.com "Talking Business" interview with Entergy New Orleans CEO Deanna Rodriguez would be worth bookmarking for a couple of reasons. For one thing, there's a part where she literally says it's nice that Austin (the city she arrived here from) is prioritizing crime, jobs, and infrastructure even though, "it is losing a lot of its soul." You know, the classic soul-for-material wealth exchange that always works out so well for everyone. Apparently, Rodriguez is excited to help get some of that alchemy working for us too!
But before she does that, she has to lay out her thoughts on the "lessons learned" for Entergy after its catastrophic system failures in the wake of Hurricane Ida left the city without power for over a week leading to at least 10 deaths in New Orleans from heat exhaustion.
What were the lessons you learned from Ida?
One of the biggest ones is that overcommunicating is a double-edged sword. You need to communicate as often as you can. But I realized I was in a very different environment than I had been in Texas, where the relationship between the regulators and the utility is very different. There, the regulators do not tweet everything you say. Here, the City Council does. Everything we shared was being amplified by the politicians either in a good way or a bad way. I think we learned how to share more carefully. It was a good lesson. If we are going to communicate with customers, we need to partner with the media to make sure we get our message out as clearly as possible.
So her main takeaway from the Ida experience is that their PR machinery needs to be a bit slicker.
As for their actual infrastructure, I'm not sure fixing that has ever been a priority. Not when every disaster presents a new opportunity to slam ratepayers with new fees. That was the idea behind their proposal before city council this week. It is likely thanks only to the federal funds made available via the infrastructure bill that councilmembers were able to resist giving them everything here.
The three projects approved Tuesday are funded in part by the federal government through the bipartisan infrastructure law.
The company will replace 97 transmission towers from Slidell to Michoud with stronger poles and pole tops, addressing a key weak point exposed by Ida. The lines feed power to about 48,000 customers. The projects will also upgrade distribution poles serving about 1,300 customers near Chef Menteur Highway and add a 30 megawatt battery to provide backup to its solar station in New Orleans East.
About half of the $106 million in costs will be funded by the feds, while ratepayers will see bills rise by $1.50 a month by 2027 to pay for the rest. If the council had approved Entergy's broader plan, customers would see their bills increase to about $12 a month for the first phase.
Most of the time, though, Entergy loves it when their shit breaks. Stretching back to Katrina, each of these episodes has been an opening to slap on more fees. It's why your bill looks like this now.
Static monthly fees may or may not do much in the way of hardening the infrastructure. But they certainly provide a consistent and predictable monthly revenue stream on top of the standard utility rates. That's exactly the sort of thing the shareholders are looking for. Which is the primary motivator behind the creation of schemes like this.
The council also debated the impact of Operation Gridiron on Entergy’s shareholders, arguing that the utility neglects necessary maintenance in favor of replacing overall infrastructure.
“Operation Gridiron is really proposed to the public as this altruistic endeavor, but that is not 100% true,” Councilmember JP Morrell said. “Entergy will profit from infrastructure investment… And you would admit that maintenance is not as profitable as replacement.”
“That’s fair,” said Courtney Nicholson, vice president of regulatory affairs at Entergy New Orleans.
In previous reporting, Verite News found that as bills have climbed, so have payments to Entergy shareholders. As of November, the utility’s parent company has paid out over $3 billion in shareholder dividends since 2020.
Entergy is responding to the hazards brought on by climate change by taking steps to ensure that their profits and dividends stay strong. When you hear their execs talk about "resilience," this is what they mean.
Still, the fact that the public at large and elected city councilmembers can still see all of this for what it is probably just means Rodriguez hasn't made good on her resolution to be better at lying to them. It isn't for lack of trying.
In November 2023, the same month the organization was founded, Resilience New Orleans released a study that said that all New Orleanians, including those experiencing social vulnerabilities, stood to benefit from Entergy’s proposed resiliency investments. DeMoss also wrote an op-ed in defense of Entergy’s plan for NOLA.com.
Other energy nonprofits in the city, like the Alliance for Affordable Energy and the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, have expressed skepticism of Entergy’s proposal, and representatives for the organizations spoke up at the meeting in support of the Council’s resolution. They also advocated for the Council to approve grid resiliency efforts put forward by community members, not just the ones proposed by Entergy.
Resilience New Orleans’ website advertises that Entergy is a supporter of the nonprofit organization. The company is thus far its only financial supporter, DeMoss told Verite News.
When asked by Verite News about her nonprofit’s connection to Entergy, DeMoss replied: “I know it doesn’t look great.”
DeMoss said Entergy gave her organization $40,000 to pay for the study, which was performed by Maryland-based firm Hedgerow Analysis. Outside of that $40,000, DeMoss said that her non-profit has neither received nor spent any other money.
This is basically just the "paid actors" bit all over again except in the form of a bogus non-profit. That they called it, "Resilience New Orleans" is almost too on-the-nose.
Anyway one more point of interest here is the paid actor in this case is Casey DeMoss. The article notes that previous to this gig, she served as director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy which is seen as a more legitimate advocate for ratepayers. That's something to watch. Lately it looks like jobs in the non-profit advocacy and political organizing sectors have been drying up everywhere. As that continues, and as corporations like Entergy seek to better hone their lobbying efforts, I don't expect DeMoss will be the last sellout we'll come across. All these comms and policy professionals are going to need resilience strategies of their own, after all.
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