Vermilion Parish residents divided over 125,000-acre coastal project
SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk did not attend Tuesday’s announcement in Abbeville, the Vermilion Parish seat about 200 miles west of New Orleans. He appeared in a prerecorded video shown before Landry’s speech, saying the new site would be named “Starbase, Louisiana.” In a subsequent social-media post, Musk said the development would host more than a dozen launch sites, allowing the company to eventually conduct over 30 flights of its Starship rocket a day — a rate that would require regulatory approval.
The complex would sit on 125,000 acres of coastal land in Vermilion Parish, roughly 40 minutes from Abbeville. State officials cited access to abundant natural gas and the ability to launch to a wide range of trajectories as advantages. SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell, who spoke at the event, said the site would include power generation, shipping infrastructure, vehicle facilities and possibly an airport.
“This will be a project like no other,” Shotwell said.
Landry, a Republican, compared the deal’s potential impact to the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. “They are offering us a permanent future and lasting prosperity,” the governor said. He said SpaceX was committing $100 billion in capital investment, with the company projecting at least 3,000 permanent jobs. The development is expected to roll out over the coming years, and SpaceX said it hopes to fly Starship from the property for the first time in 2029. A company executive said in the prerecorded video that the site would support SpaceX’s goal of flying Starship thousands of times a year.
The Louisiana site is far larger than SpaceX’s land holdings at its existing Starbase facility outside Brownsville, Texas. SpaceX has conducted more than three years of high-profile tests of the Starship rocket, which stands more than 400 feet tall on its launchpads and generates a powerful roar during liftoffs and sonic booms during re-entries of its reusable boosters.
Local reaction in Vermilion Parish is split. At Perry Outfitters, a bait shop outside Abbeville, owner Seth Chapman, 33, kept an informal poll of visitors’ feelings using star and smiley-face stickers. By last week, when Chapman stopped counting, “yes” votes topped 100, beating 72 opposed and a smattering of undecided stickers. A “Welcome Space X” sign hangs outside the shop, and Chapman described himself as a big believer in Musk.
“No matter what he wants to do, it’s going to benefit the local economy,” Chapman said.
But the most intense opposition is on Pecan Island, an unincorporated coastal stretch of Vermilion Parish with between 100 and 200 permanent residents, according to Michael S. Martin, a history professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The population expands during duck-hunting season from November through January.
Wayne Miller, 66, who said he voted for Landry, expressed frustration at the governor for “rolling out the red carpet” for SpaceX and for not telling locals more in advance. At his Pecan Island home, on raised stilts on 7 acres, Miller produced a printed-out list of pro-aerospace bills Landry recently signed — one limiting liability for rocket launchers that own at least 20,000 contiguous acres for noise, exhaust and other disturbances, and another making certain information tied to aerospace activities exempt from open records requests.
Miller, a retired commercial shrimper and oil field worker, said he fears being pushed from a lifetime home. “If they run us out, where do we go?” Miller said. “What do we do?”
Beatrice Bagwell, 74, who lives on a 240-acre Pecan Island compound that has been in her family for four generations, said she started crying over a dinner of chicken and dumplings while talking about the prospect of leaving. She said the first big sign of change came several weeks ago, when residents woke to find white “X”s painted on local roads.
“We were afraid it was aliens,” Bagwell said.
Her niece, Brooke Broussard, a special-education teacher in Abbeville, has been encouraging locals to speak out against the project. “This is not just a place of hunting and fishing, it’s not a wasteland, it’s not a forgotten place,” Broussard said. “The people who live here earned the right to live here.”
Landry said people on Pecan Island would not be asked to leave their land. Shotwell said SpaceX would partner with government agencies on shoreline protection and wildlife conservation, and that birds may fly away during launches but would return.
Some locals are hoping for an economic lift. Vermilion Parish has slightly lower incomes and higher poverty than the state at large. Bobbie Jo Scully, 54, who owns a coffee shop, drives a bus, teaches dance and styles hair to make ends meet, said she counts herself among the project’s supporters. Two of her three children have moved to Texas for better-paying work, but Scully said a daughter in Houston might return if SpaceX helps the area add jobs.
“Louisiana is in a rut,” Scully said. “We need something different.”