PECAN ISLAND – Vermilion Parish residents will find out Tuesday if billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX will build its next launch pad around Pecan Island.<\/p>\n
Pecan Island residents say the area is one where neighbors live next door to nature.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s quiet, it\u2019s quiet. You don\u2019t have all the traffic, the noise. But, it sounds like that might be fixing to change,\u201d Warren Winch, a Pecan Island resident, said.<\/p>\n
Winch is referencing a stretch of land throughout the southern part of the parish, stretching thousands of acres. The land is currently owned by ExxonMobil. The site has been the subject of multiple reports involving space exploration companies looking to build on the property, with its proximity to the Gulf.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Gov. Jeff Landry is expected to announce that a major economic development project will locate in the parish.<\/p>\n
Abbeville residents say if SpaceX does decide to build there, the project could completely change the parish.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re bringing all this industry, all this infrastructure, economy, economic stuff, but who is going to get it? Will these people in Abbeville get these jobs? Will they? Will my community be able to get these jobs? I don\u2019t think so,\u201d Abbeville resident Marilyn Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
WBRZ spoke to one Abbeville resident who expressed excitement about the project, but declined to speak on camera, sharing that he had recently signed an NDA with a SpaceX employee.<\/p>\n
For Pecan Island residents, many said the abundance of NDAs leaves a shadow over this potential economic goldmine.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey kept it a big secret until it was just about done,” Winch said. “Which I don\u2019t think is good business.\u201d<\/p>\n
But they’re also looking for the positives that a potentially massive project like SpaceX could bring.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they build it in the front, the SpaceX thing in the front, then they have to build something to protect it. If they do that, then they\u2019ll be protecting the island in a way. So, we gotta make something good out of it,\u201d Winch said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PECAN ISLAND – Vermilion Parish residents will find out Tuesday if billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX will build its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[122],"tags":[89786,89787,202,40649,43317,89789,36565,52561,89790,483,203,52267,89784,89788,207,89785,89791],"class_list":["post-200816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-elon-musk","tag-abbeville","tag-economicdevelopment","tag-elon-musk","tag-elonmusk","tag-exxonmobil","tag-gulfofmexico","tag-jefflandry","tag-launchpad","tag-localimpact","tag-louisiana","tag-musk","tag-nda","tag-pecanisland","tag-spaceexploration","tag-spacex","tag-vermilionparish","tag-wbrz"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117153442481568607","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}