Public Service Commissioner: ‘Who pays for the damages’ from recent Shreveport area outage?

In the aftermath of the Saturday power outage, businesses in Shreveport and Bossier compared notes about their lost half day. The Pool Hub in north Bossier had to cancel a planned pool tournament. Birthday parties had to be turned away at Heron restaurant in south Shreveport.

Dillas on Airline Drive, Ralph and Kacoo’s in central Bossier City, Twin Cities Car Wash on Texas Street, El Cabo Verde and Rhino Coffee just off the Southern Loop in Shreveport, joined others in being unable to cook, wash, brew coffee, or ultimately, stay open.

They were a few of the more than 32,000 residential and business customers who lost power on Saturday, some for up to six hours.

Lanny Nickell, the president and CEO of the Southwestern Power Pool said at a Tuesday news conference that it was SPP’s decision to tell SWEPCO they had to shed load because of “voltage instability on transmission lines in and around Caddo and Bossier Parish.”

District 5 Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell said he was upset with both Nickell and SWEPCO president and CEO Brett Mattison and he’s unhappy with the decision that was made. He referred to the 14 states that make up the SPP and the fact that Louisiana was the only one to have a power outage.

“That’s real bad. And we want to know what caused the problems and what are the changes to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

“People have businesses that depend on retail business, restaurants — it was a beautiful night — people going out to eat, the doors are closed. Who’s going to pay for that? Who’s going to pay for the damages?” he asked Nickell and Mattison.

Erica Gilliam, owner of the Streetcar Snoballs and Streetcar Station in Bossier City’s East Bank District was one of those businesses who was geared up for a busy Saturday night. The warm temperatures meant plenty of people would be looking for a frosty sno-ball, and a birthday party was planned for “The Swamp,” her nerf ball party space.

She says her power first went off from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., came back on for a bit, then went out again at 6:30 p.m. With no idea when or if the power might return, she closed for the night.

“It affected my business. I had a birthday party going on. And luckily, they were very nice. But we had a line of customers out the door too. So it was bad,” she said.

“We took a big hit, even for those few hours, a loss of sales, for sure. And we had to refund people too, because they didn’t want to wait to see if the power would come back on.”

Gilliam is interested in Campbell’s idea about reimbursement, but accurately determining losses would be tricky, she admits. Employee costs would be known, and any rentals that would have been turned away. The number of sno-balls, drinks, and other goodies that could have been sold would be just an estimate. She says on a warm night, 300 to 400 people may come in for something cold.

Whether compensation could be required is unknown, Campbell staffer Joe Shyne said. The Southwest Power Pool answers to the Federal Electric Regulatory Commission, an independent agency under the Department of Energy, not the PSC.

It is a question Campbell said he intends to bring up at the next PSC meeting on May 19 in Lafayette. He also wants Nickell and Mattison to attend.   

“I expect some money to reimburse these people for outages and cost of money, and somehow we need to figure out a way to do that,” he said.