The City Council Utility Committee met at 4:15 PM on February 10, 2026, to receive updates from Delta Utilities, Entergy New Orleans, and the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans (SWBNO). The meeting focused on winter gas bill spikes, reliability of electric service during Winter Storm Fern, and ongoing sewer discharge issues in the Dwyer Canal. Council members expressed strong concerns about customer confusion, lack of proactive communication, delayed responses, and the need for greater urgency, transparency, and accountability from all three entities.
Whenever you're ready, Erin. Good morning, Council members. Councilmember Hughes, present, Councilmember Green, present, Councilmember Morel present, Councilmember Willard, present, Councilmember King, present, Councilmember McCarran present, we have a quorum. Thank you. First up, we have the approval of the minutes from the joint utility committee from September 16th as well as July 11th. Those are the meetings for the joint committees, not the individual committees, just so you know. Um I will move for the approval of the September 16th and July 21st minutes. Second by Council Vice President Willow, all of those say aye. All right, unanimous, the minutes are approved. First up, we have Delta Utilities. Good morning, Council members. My name's Tim Pochet, I'm the CEO of Delta Utilities, and joining me today is Terren Brown, Ryan King, and Sarah Podius. Uh connection with your approval uh in December 2024. Uh we've also updated um the utility committee uh twice last year after the transaction uh was consummated on our progress with respect uh to uh to the integration of the business. But today we want to provide you an update uh as we get through the winter heating season, which generally runs uh from December through February of each year, when usage significantly increases. In New Orleans, our average customer consumes about 27 CCF of gas a month during the year on average, but during that heating season in December through February, that average increases to almost 60 CCF per month. Um this is particularly timely, giving our customers are now receiving separate bills for natural gas and electricity. On top of that, natural gas commodity prices uh have increased consistently over the past 12 months. All of these factors have led to a significant number of questions from our customers and and your constituents. And today we'd like to update you on our efforts to address these issues and meet our customers where there are. Whether we we are responding to customers' inquiries on billing, are participating in broader community outreach efforts uh and engagement activities, all of this is is part of our mission to deliver safe, reliable, affordable natural gas with a focus on customer service and making a positive impact in the communities that we live and serve. New Orleans uh every day. On top of that, in the last couple of weeks we have experienced a pretty significant winter storm. Uh we activated our emergency response protocols uh throughout our two-state system, and these efforts were led by our 700 legacy utility employees, including the 200 that joined our team from InterG. No significant service disruptions have occurred during this process. We actively monitored our system and the pressures and controlled uh those pressures at regulator stations as necessary to ensure reliability of our system. We operated our gas supply under the same ingredients that were in place in the prior legacy utility, and all of our gas nominations on the system were met, and we did not have any supply curtailments that affected our service to our customers. When significant winter events such as winter storm fern occur, inevitably there's some certain amount of volatility in gas prices, daily gas prices, as a result of increased demand and to a certain extent curtailment in the production of gas. But 90% of the gas volume that we delivered to customers in the month of January was not subject to daily volatility and fixed before the month started. And that was fixed for based really on three reasons. About 60% of that usage was based on the first of the month price. About 24% of that was based came from storage that we injected during the summer season when gas prices are lower and withdrew as gas prices increased during the heating season. And we exercised a certain amount of call options that we had for first of month prices. All this to get to uh over 88% of our gas was not subject to daily volatility. So but 12% of it was, and that was a significant increase in cost. We continually will meet with uh the council and its advisors on an annual basis to discuss and update our hedging plans to exit point execute upon agreed upon strategy there. But let's dive into a little bit uh more as to really what drove uh bills and in usage and volatility from our gas prices. So, Tiern? Yes. First, we want to acknowledge that we understand many New Orleans customers are frustrated and concerned about the higher bills they see this winter. We hear that concern every day through our call center, and we take it very seriously. I want to take a moment to explain in plain language what is driving these higher bills. Because for many customers, the increase can feel sudden and unexpected. So the main reason bills are higher right now is because people use a lot more natural gas during the winter. When temperatures drop, most homes use a gas furnace to heat the house. When the furnace runs more often, the home uses more natural gas, and that causes the gas bill to increase. Um that during these winter months, electricity is not used as much. In the past, well when electric, I'm sorry, electricity is not used that much because many customers use electric ACs to chill their homes during summer months. Now, what has changed is that customers are receiving two bills rather than one bill. And the past, many customers received one combined bill from Energy New Orleans, and that included both electric and gas charges together.