$700 Million

  The awesome damages wrought by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck tens of thousands of our people and thousands of businesses. Thousands of people died and hundreds of thousands suffered unimaginable hardships and financial losses.
  Included in this number were Entergy Gulf States-Louisiana and Entergy Louisiana electric companies. It is difficult to fathom the horrendous problems facing the companies and their dedicated employees during and after the storms. More than 2.0 million customers were without electricity. Within three weeks or less electricity was restored to more than 1.3 million customers.
  Officers and employees of the companies regrouped immediately and formulated plans to cope with the myriad of problems that required solutions as quickly as humanly possible. These men and women worked day and night to restore electricity to their customers despite the fact that many had their own personal problems. The companies spared no costs in their efforts to get electricity back to their customers with deliberate speed.
  The financial cost to the companies is no less astronomical with estimates of $700,000,000 million dollars to cover material and labor costs. Material costs include the replacement of utility poles, spans of wire, transformers and other material costs. Labor costs were incurred for over 23,200 restoration workers.
Entergy has a plan to spread these costs over a 10 year period to minimize the charges to their customers. Entergy Gulf States-Louisiana has requested a line item charge of $1.63 per 1,000 kWh usage and Entergy Louisiana has requested a charge of $2.37 per kWh usage. These charges for the first year are estimated to bring in $19 million for Entergy Gulf States-Louisiana and $45million for Entergy Louisiana. Based on these estimates it will take a little more than 10.9 years to recover their respective losses.
  Entergy has done its share. Now it’s time to reciprocate for the long term good of the companies and their customers.
  Time is of the essence for Entergy and we hope that the Louisiana Public Service Commission will move with dispatch to study and grant their requests. Customers will benefit too if their electric costs are minimized as much as possible and spread over a 10 year period.