BATON ROUGE — An issue every Louisiana voter has on their November ballot centers around a proposed new constitutional amendment dealing with whether federal revenue that Louisiana gets from alternative or renewable energy sources generated off the coast should go to the coastal protection and restoration fund or go to the state’s general fund.

The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority already receives oil and gas money from sources at the state and federal levels. The proposed amendment would add revenue from alternative energy sources.

“The main one would be wind farms. There’s nothing out there right now, but there are some early ventures that are looking to put one out there. So that would have to happen. Then the federal government would have to pass legislation to share that revenue with us,” Dr. Steven Procopio with the Public Affairs Research Council said. 

CPRA says the Louisiana coast has lost about 2,000 square miles of land since the 1930s. They say around 3,000 more could be lost in the next 50 years. 

“Coastal erosion problems are serious, and we’ve had them for decades. Most of that is due to something known as subsidence. It’s just as these waters were built up from rivers over hundreds of years; if they aren’t replenished, then the earth tends to settle. So that’s happening all along, and you also get wear and tear from hurricanes,” Procopio said.

Voting yes would make it so that the money generated from the coast would be used on projects aimed at protecting the coast. 

Council for a Better Louisiana President Barry Erwin says he is a supporter of the amendment.

“We passed a constitutional amendment back in 2006 that basically said if we get any oil and gas revenues from outside our state waters, the outer-continental shelf, we want to say we’re going to dedicate that to the coast for protection and restoration. It served us very well by doing that,” Erwin said.

Voting no would put that money into the state’s general fund, allowing it to be used for other projects.

“We’ve certainly been working on constitutional reform, and one component of that is trying to get more flexibility within the state budget. We need to empower the legislature to make those decisions,” Pelican Institute for Public Policy CEO Daniel Erspamer said.

The Public Affairs Research Council says that currently there is no federal funding from the sources affected by the amendment. This would dedicate future funding if bills pending in Congress are passed.