Councilmembers,

Below is an update that you or community groups can cut and paste to their websites.  I am providing this brief summary in advance of the morning briefing.

Entergy New Orleans Update – Friday, August 31, 9:45am

We have restored power to approximately 3,000 more customers since last night’s update bringing the total to approximately 15,000 customers since the peak of outages.  Transmission service is available to all substations and all substations are energized.  The next critical step is to restore the main feeders leaving the substations.  All of them have been assessed and those that sustained damage are being worked on.  This is a critical step to restore power to the community.  This must be completed in order to restore power to the lateral lines that supply power to neighborhoods and businesses.

We now have 1147 additional resources in our area: 899 including linemen, vegetation, and scouts; 208 for other support.   If the weather continues to cooperate, we anticipate making substantial progress today.  We should be near completion with all of our assessments today and should have most of our feeders back in service, leaving us with the lateral lines to repair.  Vegetation crews will continue to remove tree branches, debris, and vines from our lines.

We hope to restore power to a considerable number of customers today and I will send out more periodic reports beginning after noon.  We are working on getting you district-specific information today.

Again, we anticipate making good progress on our infrastructure and getting many customers in service today and tomorrow. Our crews are working hard, but more importantly they are working safely.  More information will be provided this afternoon.

Sincerely,

Gary Huntley

Entergy New Orleans, Inc.

Vice President Regulatory and Governmental Affairs