Residents on only one side of neighborhood street experiencing consistent power outages - WAFB

Residents on only one side of neighborhood street experiencing consistent power outages

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Imagine paying over 200 dollars a month for your energy bill, only to expect the power to go out. For Leshianne Ruffins and her mom Patricia Roberston, that’s what the past 19 years have looked like.

“You know, we may not even have a hurricane, but we’re gonna have a power outage, I can bet that,” Robertson said.

Both she and her daughter say even when skies are clear, they’ve had power outages hit only their side of the street.

“It goes in that circle, all the way to Silver Leaf Street, comes up Silver Leaf, back down to Greenwell Street. All of us on this side of the street, no power,” Robertson said.

“As soon as the wind blows hard, the lights go out,” Ruffins said.

They say it happens at least twice a month, but sometimes twice a week. They’ve gotten used to spending hundreds of dollars on battery-operated devices and batteries.

Roberson said she just has to make herself comfortable unless the power is out for two or three days. At that point, she has to leave her home. But at 72-years-old, that isn’t always doable.

Robertson said they’ve tried contacting Entergy about the issue, but for over six months, nothing has changed.

“The text messages that I got from Entergy telling me about they know the situation, and they’re gonna be working on it, and finding out the problem,” Robertson said. “December 19, 2023, and here we are almost December again, and they haven’t done anything about it.”

Public Service Commissioner Davante Lewis, said this is something they have seen impact other areas.

“We saw some of these issues in Gonzales and Ascension Parish earlier this year, we’ve seen this in parts of my district, around Sherwood Forest,” Lewis said. “If I see a certain neighborhood or an area with a significant amount of outages being reported and even logged, I request and require the utility company to give me a diagnostic of what the issue is, and how they plan to fix that and remedy it.”

Lewis said the issue may require tougher regulations on utility companies, but Robertson and Ruffins feel like they’ve waited too long already.

“It’s just 19, almost 20 years of the same thing,” Robertson said.

WAFB reached out to Entergy and a representative said they wouldn’t be able to tell us how many outages have occurred in that specific neighborhood by the end of the day on June 17.

Entergy said they take all customer concerns seriously and will look into the matter to determine if any necessary steps should be taken.

Click here to report a typo.

Copyright 2024 WAFB. All rights reserved.