Louisiana's grid is one of the least reliable — and sometimes unsafe — in the country. Our neglected distribution system is a big reason why.
The National Electrical Safety Code — the only standard Louisiana follows — says utilities should inspect poles:
"...at such intervals as experience has shown to be necessary."
— NESC Rule 214A
No specific interval. No minimum. Utilities decide for themselves when — and whether — to inspect. Here's how Louisiana compares:
| Jurisdiction | Required Inspection Cycle |
|---|---|
| EEI recommendation (Gulf States) | 3 years |
| California (CPUC mandate) | 5 years |
| Florida (state mandate) | 8 years |
| Louisiana / LPSC requirement | None |
The industry's own trade group recommends inspections every 3 years for Gulf States like Louisiana, where humidity, termites, and hurricanes accelerate pole decay. Louisiana sets no required inspection schedule. Meanwhile, Entergy told the Jefferson Parish Council it inspects every 10 years — but told an industry conference in 2017 it was every 15. Nobody's verifying either claim.
Every dollar your utility doesn't spend maintaining your poles, they keep as profit.
Your bill includes maintenance money every month. When they don't spend it, the savings go straight to shareholders. Nobody checks. Nobody fines them. The poles rot.
After Hurricanes Ida, Zeta, and Laura caused billions in damage, the LPSC opened three investigation dockets and hired independent consultants to study the problem. Two separate expert efforts produced detailed recommendations. Neither was implemented.
Dockets R-35394 & R-36226 · Prepared by Critical Technologies Consulting LLC, December 2023
CTC delivered a comprehensive report with 13 sections of specific recommendations, including:
Result: Both dockets were closed on August 29, 2025 — 20 months after the report was filed. The official reason? The dockets were "stale."
Docket R-36227 · Consultants: David Williams & CSRS · View Staff Report
A separate consulting effort produced a Final Proposed Rule (August 2023) that would have required every Louisiana utility to file a Grid Resilience Plan — with quantitative risk modeling, vulnerability assessments, funding plans, and semi-annual progress reports.
Result: The rule was never adopted. Instead, Entergy got its own company-specific $1.9 billion plan approved — while the industry-wide rules that would have applied to Cleco, SWEPCO, and all co-ops were abandoned. As LPSC Staff noted: Entergy's plan "contains no proposal that would necessarily apply to the rest of the regulated electric utilities in the state."
Six years of investigation. Two independent expert proposals. Zero implemented.
in storm damage to Louisiana's grid since Hurricane Katrina
Source: LPSC Staff Report, Grid Status Docket R-36226
in storm costs passed to ratepayers in 2022 and 2023 alone
The LPSC Staff's own report asked whether this damage "could have been avoided or mitigated" with better inspections and maintenance. Their investigation confirmed the problems existed. Then the Commission closed the docket.
Other findings from the investigation:
Every monthly bill includes charges that fund infrastructure maintenance. Utilities collect this money. When they don't spend it, the savings go straight to shareholders. The work doesn't get done.
A new line item on Entergy Louisiana customers' bills (2024) to replace and harden the poles that should have been maintained with Payment 1. Entergy earns a guaranteed 9.70% return on every dollar spent.
Another new rider (2026) adding up to 1% to your monthly bill for tree trimming that was supposed to be covered in Payment 1. The Commission's own chairman explained why:
"I think a lot of times we try to trim our vegetation budget a little bit to make our numbers match."
— LPSC Chairman Mike Francis, October 23, 2025
After all three payments: still no required inspection schedule.
In 2023, after a flood of grid complaints in Breaux Bridge, the Commission and the utilities ran a pilot: they put every pole in town on a shared, real-time map. Crews marked each one from the field — passed inspection, needs inspection, to be replaced, replaced, to be removed. City officials and customers could watch the work happen.
The result: over 2,500 poles inspected and hundreds of poles replaced or hauled off in five months. The Commission's own staff wrote that the tracking system brought "visible and real results" and recommended taking it statewide, with deadlines and penalties. (LPSC Docket R-35394 Staff Report, December 2023.)
None of it was adopted. The same report admits that in 25 years of reliability standards, no Louisiana electric utility had ever been fined for missing them.
So the lesson isn't that tracking poles is impossible. The Commission proved it works. The lesson is that when the tracking stopped, so did the fixing.
ServiceMyPole is the public version of that shelved system — built by Chris Justin, a licensed Professional Engineer and former consultant to the Public Service Commission, and powered by anyone with a phone. If the utilities won't track the poles and the Commission won't make them, we'll build the record ourselves.
Every pole submitted is assessed for the kinds of issues the CTC Staff Report flagged — ground-line decay, vegetation encroachment, structural support, and cross-arm condition. The data is public. The map is growing. And it's already working: a broken stub pole at Bancroft & Mirabeau in New Orleans sat propped on a 2x4 for five years — six weeks after it went up on ServiceMyPole, a crew came out and took it away. We got it serviced. Utilities and commissioners can't ignore what voters can see.
If a line is down or a pole looks like it could fall, stay away and call 911, then your utility's outage line. Never touch or approach a downed line. Document it for ServiceMyPole later, from a safe distance, once the immediate danger is handled.
Report it to the utility that owns it — the name is usually on a tag a few feet up the pole, and every utility has a report line on its website. Then post it on ServiceMyPole. The utility's ticket goes into a queue you can't see; the public record is how it stays visible until it's fixed.
The pole's owner — usually the electric utility, sometimes the phone company. Ratepayers already fund pole maintenance through their monthly bills. The Public Service Commission is supposed to make sure that work actually happens.
The industry design-life baseline for a treated wood distribution pole is about 40 years — and that assumes the routine inspection and maintenance customers pay for every month actually gets done.
It can. A broken stub pole in New Orleans sat propped on a 2x4 for about five years. Six weeks after it went up on ServiceMyPole, a crew came out and removed it. Attention works.
Condition assessments on ServiceMyPole.org are automated estimates based on photo analysis, not professional inspections. Contact a licensed utility pole inspector for a formal structural assessment. All docket citations reference public records available through the Louisiana Public Service Commission.