By David Vitrano

L’Observateur

LAPLACE – Entergy Louisiana recently donated $355,000 to the St. John United Way to aid those affected by Hurricane Isaac on their path to recovery.

“Now is the time to focus on our customers, our neighbors and our communities as they continue to struggle to return their lives to normalcy and to overcome the financial difficulty this hurricane has caused,” said Entergy Louisiana President and CEO Bill Mohl. “Our communities are not getting the level of national outporing of aid and assistance as in the past. This makes this a local challenge that only neighbors helping neighbors can fix.”

The donation to the United Way will be distributed to its partner agencies, including Second Harvest of Greater New Orleans and Acadiana, Our Daily Bread, Catholic Charities and the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank.

Molhl said that by donating the money to the United Way, Entergy is assured its aid will go to those most impacted by Isaac.

Before the check presentation, Mohl and other Entergy Louisiana representatives met with the parish administration to discuss the recovery process, specifically power recovery efforts.

“We learned it is critical to be able to work with parish leaders,” said Mohl.

Mohl added Entergy itself learned some lessons from the aftermath of Hurricane Isaac. He said in the future the company will do a better job of setting customer expectations. Although restoration times vary, he said a good rule of thumb is to expect power to be out for one week following a category 1 storm, two weeks for a category 2 and three weeks for a category 3.

“There need to be reasonable expectations,” he said.

Power was able to be restored to St. John the Baptist Parish rather quickly, with every customer whose power was able to take power being restored within five days. No major damage was reported to the power infrastructure.

Mohl noted that in the instances in which infrastructure has had to be replaced it has been replaced with improved components, such a higher density utility poles.

“We’re investing a substantial amount in our infrastructure overall,” said Mohl, adding, “The damage to our transmission system was much less compared to Gustav.”