The Offshore Windmill Bill
The offshore Windmill Bill. Despite being unable to pass vital legislation important to the citizens of Louisiana, HB 165, which designated 25,000 acres of offshore Louisiana water for the development of green energy wind turbines, passed both the House and Senate and is now law in Louisiana. This misguided Bill co-authored by Republican representatives Jerome Zeringue (Lafourche and Terrebone Parishes) and Joseph Orgeron (Jefferson and Lafourche Parishes) will have a devastating effect on Louisiana’s environment, will increase the costs of fuel, and will facilitate massive federal taxpayer subsidies to green energy companies. The Bill also ignores the dismal history of failure in other places where wind energy of this sort has been implemented. Additionally, not one Louisiana Republican representative or senator objected to the potential conflict of interest of the Bill’s Co-author, Republican representative Joseph Orgeron. Orgeron owns 2nd Wind Marine, LLC, which stands to make a huge amount of money from this legislation, and in fact has built large super-feeder vessels for the purpose of transporting the turbine components to their offshore site pre-construction. LACAG believes that this is a textbook example of the type of self-dealing that Louisiana citizens have come to disdain in their elected leaders. Every voter in both Zeringue’s and Orgeron’s districts should be made aware of this when they vote.
