BATON ROUGE — A slate of bills to give individual Louisiana parishes say-so over whether carbon dioxide sequestration projects can take place locally failed Tuesday in committee, effectively killing the effort for the legislative session.
Six proposals that would allow parishes to opt-in for a vote on whether to permit CO2 capture and sequestration failed in close votes before the House Natural Resources Committee.
House Bill 5 by Rep. Mike Johnson, R-Pineville, would have had the widest impact of all the bills. It would have given every parish authority to hold referendums on carbon projects and was rejected in a 7-9 vote.
“When a project affects an entire community, the community deserves a voice,” Johnson said in support of his bill.
Dustin Davidson, secretary for the Louisiana Department of Conservation and Energy, told the committee the bills could encounter some legal trouble if approved. In his capacity as a state official, he cannot take a position on legislation but testified “for information purposes only.”
“As it stands, all of these local option bills are unconstitutional,” Davidson said.
Davidson said the local control bills would likely cost the state money to defend in court, and they could result in the federal government taking Louisiana’s ability to permit the wells needed for carbon sequestration. Louisiana was granted control, or primacy, over class IV wells in 2023, which the Department of Conservation and Energy currently oversees.
“If these bills were to move forward … it’s very likely that the EPA will come and take our program and none of this matters,” Davidson said, adding that the federal government would require fewer regulatory hurdles for class VI wells than the state currently implements.
Johnson and Rep. Lauren Ventralla, R-Greenwell Springs, pushed back on Davidson’s claims, saying they were largely up to interpretation.
“It is not a minor thing when your secretary comes to this table and testifies,” Johnson said. “I take his concerns strongly because of who he is, but I disagree with his interpretation entirely.”
Johnson also argued that, based on Davidson’s view, Gov. Jeff Landry’s moratorium on new carbon storage permits and legislation approved last year requiring public comment before projects can happen would also threaten the state’s control over class VI wells.
Along with House Bill 5, the committee rejected five other bills that would have allowed votes on carbon storage in Allen, Beauregard, Rapides, Sabine and Vernon parishes, where the bulk of such projects are planned.
The tone for stricter carbon storage regulation in Louisiana was set in early April when another bill from Johnson was shot down in the same committee. It sought to prohibit companies from acquiring private property through eminent domain for CO2 pipelines or wells.
Editor’s Note: The following article from author Elise Plunk was originally published by the Louisiana Illuminator, an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization with a mission to cast light on how decisions in Baton Rouge are made and how they affect the lives of everyday Louisianians.
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