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Entergy says reliability up, but City Council says current outages 'unacceptable'

"Clearly there is a problem if it's a transformer, a line, mutant ninja squirrels."

NEW ORLEANS -- The number one cause of power outages in the City of New Orleans is equipment failure; hundreds happen every year and City Council members say that number needs to decrease.

"The frustration is mounting, the outages are unacceptable," said member Jay Banks.

Council members drilled Entergy New Orleans officials demanding answers about power outages caused by equipment failure. They want to know what's being done and when ratepayers can see changes.

"Year to date we're already seeing the trends go down, blue sky outages trending down," said one Entergy New Orleans official.

Entergy officials say they've seen a 32 percent improvement in reliability compared to this time last year. This improvement is not good enough.

"My constituents are not seeing any relief," said council member Jared Brossett. "It continues today and it doesn't seem like it's any different from last year."

"Clearly there is a problem if it's a transformer, a line, mutant ninja squirrels," Banks added.

City council wants Entergy to look at what other utility companies in the U.S. are doing and figure out what's working. Members also say the utility company needs to spend more money on equipment before it fails and stop blaming animals, like squirrels.

"They keep saying squirrels are the problem and we aren't the only city on the planet with squirrels so how are our squirrels so much more whatever they are than squirrels anywhere else," Banks said. "At the end of the day, that doesn't do it for me."

City Council advisers will now look at the reliability plan submitted by Entergy New Orleans and give their analysis of it. That analysis is expected by the end of August.

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