Entergy Louisiana proposed building the 1,600-acre Cypress Harvest solar farm and battery storage complex off Derrick Road southwest of Plaquemine.
Entergy Louisiana proposed building the 1,600-acre Cypress Harvest solar farm and battery storage complex off Derrick Road southwest of Plaquemine.
Entergy Louisiana proposed building the 1,600-acre Cypress Harvest solar farm and battery storage complex off Derrick Road southwest of Plaquemine.
Entergy Louisiana proposed building the 1,600-acre Cypress Harvest solar farm and battery storage complex off Derrick Road southwest of Plaquemine.
Two months ago, the Iberville Parish Council rejected the 1,600-acre Cypress Harvest Solar complex southwest of Plaquemine amid public concerns about heavy metal contamination, fires, property values and aesthetics.
Now the backer of that project, Entergy Louisiana, is asking a state district judge to force the elected officials to tell the utility why a council majority turned down the solar array in mid-August.
Entergy claims in its lawsuit that the council’s own solar farm ordinance requires a written statement laying out the reasons for denial and a 30-day period after that in which the problems can be addressed.
Entergy says it didn’t get a written statement or an opportunity to “remediate the defects,” noting “no defects were ever identified.”
The lawsuit alleges that in a September letter sent about two weeks after the vote, parish officials maintained that the requirement for a defect letter doesn’t apply to the council because it isn’t “an official” and can’t “issue a letter explaining each council member’s vote.”
Proposed for sugar cane fields just west of Plaquemine High School and the Tenant Road community, the nearly $300 million Cypress Harvest would generate 200 megawatts of power. The solar array would also have a 30-acre battery storage complex within it to store electricity.
The Louisiana Public Service Commission approved the solar complex in April and, at the time, Entergy had hoped to start construction on Iberville’s only solar farm by last month. Under that schedule, the solar farm would have been operational by September 2028, the company has said.
The Parish Council met Tuesday night in Plaquemine in closed session to discuss the new lawsuit, which was filed Oct. 5 in Iberville Parish, and now plans to file a response to defend its reading of the law.
The suit is the latest turn in difficulties that renewable power ventures have sometimes faced in establishing themselves in Louisiana, despite support from major utilities and interest from big industrial operations seeking cleaner power sources.
A few years ago, the council in neighboring St. James Parish turned down a large solar farm, triggering a lawsuit from the project’s backers. Though not developed by Entergy, that project would have supplied the utility also.
In August 2025, Florida-based NextEra Energy dropped plans to build the 2,000-acre Coastal Prairie Solar complex farther south in Iberville near White Castle amid strong public opposition.
The push for solar over the past several years has triggered several local governments to temporarily ban such developments while they create new siting rules.
In January 2023, Iberville Parish adopted its rules, which are now the subject of the lawsuit. This summer, the council adopted a two-year moratorium on battery storage complexes so the council can study the issue.
In an interview Tuesday night, Parish President Chris Daigle reiterated the legal interpretation of the solar farm ordinance that parish officials stated in the September letter to Entergy.
He said he and his administration can ask applicants questions, but the council serves more as an “appeal process” to that administrative review and as the “final governing authority” on solar applications.
“Their lawyers have a different interpretation of what that means,” he said, adding that the parish is confident in its interpretation “because we’re the ones that wrote the ordinance.”
An Entergy spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The Parish Council rejected the Cypress Harvest project in a 7-4 vote, with one council member absent.
During that August hearing, Entergy officials and representatives of the local landowners repeatedly pointed out that parish engineering had found the project met all the technical requirements of the parish ordinance, a fact Daigle also told the council at the time.
The solar complex would have been set back from major roads, homes and schools by about a half-mile in many cases, well exceeding ordinance requirements, plans show. The rules also mandate a decommissioning plan, require safety and wind-risk plans to be shared with local officials, and impose limits on magnetic fields and sound.
Solar industry advocates say that while fires are a risk, they are rare. Critics say fires are under reported.
During the meeting, some council members did give reasons for their votes.
Councilwoman Chasity Easley, who represents the area where the panels would be built, said the area has been prioritized for agriculture. She said she had concerns about the loss of agricultural land, the impact on property values for neighboring homes and the lack of permanent jobs from the solar complex. She also recognized local residents’ opposition.
“From their valid concerns, I cannot support this project,” she said.
Council members who supported the project aired concerns about protecting land rights from government overreach and about what they saw as the council’s failure to apply its own rules equitably.
“For us to turn this down, it sends a really bad message to Iberville,” Councilman Terry Bradford said.
Cypress Harvest was expected to cost about $297 million to build and to create 201 construction and four full-time jobs. Construction is estimated to generate $7.8 million in onetime sales tax revenue and another $2.9 million in annual property tax revenue, Entergy has said.
David J. Mitchell can be reached at dmitchell@theadvocate.com.
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