The New Orleans City Council did not need additional reasons to approve a new power plant in New Orleans East last year. It certainly did not need to hear from “fake supporters” paid by Entergy.
But, for some reason, the utility couldn’t resist piling on. That was dumb. It should also be expensive.
Among the Council’s options now: Hit Entergy with a fine, one that can’t be passed on to ratepayers, and make it big enough to hurt. Another option: Launch a prudency investigation into Entergy’s failure to upgrade its distribution system, which contributes to fail almost daily.
Only thing the council should not do is scuttle the new power plant. That would punish ratepayers, who already face too many outages.