CHALMETTE — When they’re not studying hydraulic systems, electric motors and coastal ecology, the inaugural class of a first-of-its-kind community college program will be diving into a bayou, climbing towers and dangling from ropes more than 50 feet in the air.
This fall, Nunez Community College in Chalmette will launch a two-year program that trains students as entry-level turbine technicians for the growing wind energy sector. Graduates will be equipped to work high in the sky and far out at sea, supporting the development of planned offshore wind farms in the Gulf of Mexico.
“It’s definitely a lot of hands-on training,” said Jacqueline Richard, Nunez’s Coastal Studies Program manager. “It’s very practical because we want to make people as employable as possible.”
Nunez is the first college or university in Louisiana to offer a wind energy-related degree program and the first community college in the Southeast to offer an associate degree focused on wind energy, Richard said.
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The program is geared toward young people looking to start a career and experienced workers from the oil and gas industry who may want to broaden their horizons.
“All across the [oil and gas] supply chain, there’s a lot of transferable skills,” said Matheus Chagas, director of renewable energy projects at Grand Isle Shipyard, a Louisiana company that’s long served the oil and gas industry but is expanding into offshore wind. “All the services we’ve deployed for oil and gas can be deployed for offshore wind.”
While Louisiana has long tied its economy and identity to fossil fuel extraction, these resources are finite and job prospects are dwindling. Burning oil and gas also releases greenhouse gases, contributing to sea level rise, intensifying hurricanes and other dangers related to climate change.
“Wind will always be here, whereas fossil fuels will not,” Richard said. “It brings energy to our state in a sustainable way.”
The program offers free tuition to this year’s cohort of 20 students, who could earn well beyond Louisiana’s median income of $50,000 once they graduate.
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“Starting pay with this kind of technical diploma is $60,000,” Richard said. “It sets students on a fantastic path with little debt.”
Other Louisiana schools are also offering pathways in the wind energy sector. Late last year, the University of New Orleans announced the first five engineering students in its inaugural Wind Energy Hub scholar program. Each student receives a $5,000 scholarship and a paid internship with German wind energy developer RWE or a Louisiana company that has helped build wind farms or support vessels, such as Edison Chouest Offshore of Cut Off and Keystone Engineering of Mandeville.
Nunez hopes to link its program to UNO’s, allowing two-year degree graduates to seamlessly transition to the larger school and eventually earn a four-year degree.
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Dunking and climbing
Courses in the Nunez program range from environmental sciences and technical repair and engineering classes to in-the-field safety trainings that replicate work at onshore and offshore wind farms.
“They’ll be dunked in the water and rescued in Bayou Bienvenue,” Richard said of a water safety course that’s planned near Lake Borgne. “We didn’t want to do it in a crystal clear pool because that’s not what the Gulf of Mexico is like.”
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Students will also practice working from heights with ropes and other safety equipment.
Scholarships for the program, which amount to a full ride for the first class, were funded by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Gulf Research Program.
Nunez developed its curriculum with Energy Innovation, a wind energy training and education center in Norway. The center trained and certified Nunez’s instructors in Egersund, Norway late last year.
“Rather than re-create the academic wheel, we decided to partner with someone who has mapped it all out already,” Richard said.
In April, the program passed an audit and inspection by the Global Wind Organization, the top sanctioning body for the wind energy industry. The GWO’s stamp of approval means the program’s graduates will be qualified to enter the wind energy workforce in the U.S. and abroad.
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Six Louisiana companies helped build the Block Island Wind Farm near Rhode Island (Courtesy of Deepwater Wind)
Wind workforce
The U.S.’s first utility-scale offshore wind project started spinning off the coast of New York in March, and two more large projects are under construction near Massachusetts.
The New York wind farm and a few smaller projects on the East Coast amount to about 240 megawatts of offshore wind energy capacity in the U.S.
Federal energy regulators are gearing up for a second offshore lease sale in the Gulf after the first one drew just one bid last year. The winning proposal by RWE aims to build a wind farm near Lake Charles in the coming years. Two smaller wind projects in Louisiana-managed waters, which extend three miles from the coast, are planned near Port Fourchon and Cameron Parish.
The pace of offshore wind construction is far behind the Biden administration’s goal of generating at least 30,000 megawatts by the decade’s end. The reasons are varied: supply chain delays, high interest rates and rising inflation.
A lack of trained workers has also been a factor, according to research by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which recently estimated the U.S.’s offshore wind workforce at less than 1,000 people. To reach the administration’s goals, the industry would need to hire 43,000 more workers and add 33,000 people in support services, according to NREL.
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“Skilled trades are some of the most important positions for the offshore wind energy industry,” NREL researcher Jeremy Stefek said. “It represents a pretty big gap that will need to be filled for the industry to grow.”
Louisiana companies with roots in the offshore oil and gas industry have been applying their offshore know-how in the wind industry for nearly a decade. Six Louisiana firms supplied designers, engineers, ship operators and marine welders to help build the U.S.’s first offshore wind farm, a five-turbine project off Rhode Island, in 2016.
Nearly a quarter of all offshore wind work contracts in the U.S. have gone to Gulf-based firms, with about $1 billion in investments flowing to the region’s ship and fabrication yards in recent years, according to the Oceantic Network, an industry trade group.
Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry’s role in Louisiana has been shrinking. The number of oil and gas jobs has been cut by about half over the past decade. The industry now employs less than 2% of the state’s workforce.
Richard said the loss of these good-paying jobs, many of which were accessible to people with little more than a high school diploma, has been painful in many communities, including St. Bernard Parish, where Nunez is based. The parish’s poverty rate has grown from 14% to nearly 23% over the past two decades.
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“We’re trying to back pathways to high-earning jobs that don’t require four years of college,” Richard said. “This is a generational investment that our students and maybe some of their kids can take advantage of.”
This article first appeared on Verite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Federal authorities released the findings of an investigation Thursday that revealed a pattern of unlawful conduct within the Louisiana State Police, including troopers’ use of excessive force, lack of accountability and other problems in “every corner of the state.”
The U.S. Department of Justice review was prompted by the May 2019 killing of Ronald Greene, a 49-year-old Black man, in police custody. He died while handcuffed and shackled face down on the side of a highway, pleading with the troopers and local deputy who beat him following a vehicle pursuit near Monroe.
Department of Justice investigators found systemic problems from a culture of aggression, “unchecked misconduct” and unusual tactics within State Police that encourage troopers to escalate interactions with citizens. These problems and others contribute to a pattern or practice of excessive force that violates the constitutional rights of citizens, according to a report from the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
The report details the findings of what is called a “pattern or practice” investigation, which federal authorities use to identify the root causes of problems in local or state law enforcement agencies plagued by repeated scandals and allegations of unconstitutional behavior.
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The state’s Republican leaders have already begun pushing back against the findings. Both Gov. Jeff Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill issued a joint statement Thursday, claiming the Justice Department report is “old news from the previous administration” and an attempt to “advance a political agenda.” They did not specify what that agenda is.
Louisiana State Police, whose superintendent is a governor’s appointee, has not responded to the report. In an emailed response Friday, LSP spokesperson Capt. Nick Manale deferred questions to the governor and attorney general.
Members of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus, along with the ACLU, requested the DOJ probe in 2021 following a series of high-profile beatings of Black motorists and alleged coverups within LSP such as the Ronald Greene case.
Body camera and dashboard camera footage showed the white troopers beat Greene, dragged him by ankle shackles, shocked him with Tasers and left him face down in the road. When Greene tried to roll onto his side, a trooper placed his boot on his back and forced him back down. None of the troopers or sheriff’s deputies on the scene rendered aid when Greene became unresponsive and died before an ambulance arrived.
Case against cops in Ronald Greene’s death could fall apart as judge considers dismissals
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Some of the troopers then mislabeled the video evidence and misdated their reports, concealing their actions and delaying any internal accountability for more than a year. During that time period, one of the troopers involved in Greene’s death “would go on to assault more drivers,” according to the report. The Justice Department did not name the trooper. Former LSP trooper Dakota DeMoss, who was involved in Greene’s death, faced charges in a separate excessive force case in 2021.
However, despite its findings, the Justice Department opted to bring no federal charges against any of the officers involved in the Ronald Greene case. Additionally, local prosecutors in Union Parish fumbled the cases it brought against each of the officers, allowing all of them to either go free or plead to misdemeanors.
The latest of those occurred this week when federal authorities told Greene’s family they would no longer be pursuing charges in the case. A day later, Union Parish Deputy Chris Harpin pleaded no contest to a state charge of simple battery. He received a sentence of supervised probation. In a similar move last year, former LSP Trooper Kory York pleaded no contest to simple battery and also received probation.
The Justice Department reviewed many other incidents in which troopers displayed similar misconduct and violated the rights of drivers. The investigators found that Louisiana State Police reported more than 1,300 uses of force from 2018 to 2023. They reviewed every LSP shooting and hundreds of other randomly selected force incidents from that time period.
“We found that LSP troopers across the state use excessive force,” the report states. “We found LSP’s use of Tasers particularly concerning.”
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Those concerns included troopers’ tendency to quickly escalate the use of excessive force “within the first few moments of encountering a person” and without warning them or giving them a chance to comply with verbal commands. The troopers also use force on many who are restrained or unable to flee and pose no threat, the report states.
In one such incident, an LSP trooper stunned an unarmed man in the back with a Taser while he was lying face down, surrounded by at least five officers.
“The driver did not pose an immediate threat to anyone’s safety, was not armed, did not actively resist arrest, and did not attempt to run,” the report states.
In another incident, a trooper fired 15 bullets from his handgun at a car that got stuck in the mud. Other officers at the scene then joined in on the shooting.
Coroners’ records missing on Ronald Greene death
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One trooper said, “He has no tires, he ain’t going nowhere,” then fired 19 more bullets at the car from his rifle. Together, they fired a total of 61 bullets at the disabled car and then finally dragged the driver out through a broken window. The driver sustained cuts but was not shot.
The review also found troopers are quick to draw their service weapons to deal with seemingly small annoyances. In one case, a trooper conducted a traffic stop on a car for improper lane usage, and even though the driver immediately pulled over, the trooper yelled at him to step out. About 10 seconds later, the trooper walked up to the driver’s window, which was rolled down, and placed his gun a few inches from the back of the driver’s head. He then opened the door, dragged the driver out of the car and slammed him onto the pavement.
Prior to 2022, the State Police Training Academy used a military-style bootcamp approach to training new cadets that was designed to instill stress and to establish a “warrior mindset,” the report states. Policing experts LSP hired to evaluate the agency found it created an adverse learning environment in which “troopers were primed to view everyone as a potential threat.”
The Justice Department also found that State Police does not conduct meaningful internal investigations when legitimate complaints are made. The agency’s internal affairs division either refuses to open investigations, minimizes the misconduct, and clears troopers or reduces discipline without any explanation, the report states.
The DOJ report recommends a series of reforms to State Police training, tactics, policies and accountability mechanisms, though LSP is under no obligation to follow the recommendations.
Taking shape: Leaders for a Better Louisiana, the new organization that formed from the merger of the Council for a Better Louisiana and the Committee of 100 for Economic Development, on Friday announced its officers and board members for 2025. Heather Poole, who previously served as the chair of CABL, and Phillip Rozeman, who previously served as the vice chair and chair-elect of C100, will serve as Better Louisiana’s co-chairs. The organization also announced the election of Scott Ballard as chair-elect, Robert Schneckenburger as secretary and Spencer Martin as treasurer.
Excessive force: The Louisiana State Police for years have used excessive force during arrests and vehicle pursuits, a statewide pattern of misconduct that places the public at “serious risk of harm,” according to a scathing report released Thursday by the U.S. Justice Department. Read more from The Associated Press.
Aftermath: Despite earnings that beat analysts’ expectations, UnitedHealth Group shares dropped after it reported higher medical costs in the fourth quarter. The health care company discussed the results in a call that was its first public event since the assassination of Brian Thompson last month. Thompson ran the company’s insurance unit, the nation’s largest. The call was a delicate communications challenge, as the company’s leaders had to reassure investors of its current and future financial performance while also contending with negative public scrutiny and the loss of a “widely liked” executive. Read more from The Wall Street Journal.
The Louisiana State Police for years have used excessive force during arrests and vehicle pursuits, a statewide pattern of misconduct that places the public at “serious risk of harm,” according to a scathing report released Thursday by the U.S. Justice Department.
A broad civil rights inquiry, announced in 2022 following an Associated Press investigation, found troopers’ use of stun guns “particularly concerning,” and that troopers have used force on people who “do not pose a threat or a flight risk,” often because they are restrained. It cited “systemic failures in supervision” and “chronic underreporting of force.”
“We also found that troopers use excessive force to immediately control encounters, often within the first few moments of encountering a person and without giving the person a warning or an opportunity to comply,” the report said. “Additionally, LSP uses excessive force on people who run from troopers, even when that person is only suspected of a misdemeanor.”
The findings were released two days after federal prosecutors said they would not bring charges in the deadly 2019 arrest of Black motorist Ronald Greene, ending a lengthy probe into the white state troopers who stunned, punched and dragged Greene on a roadside following a high-speed chase outside Monroe, Louisiana.
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Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, blasted the report as an attempt “to diminish the service and exceptionality of LSP.”
“We will not let that happen,” Landry said in a statement. “The reputation of our men and women in blue is one of respect, admiration and appreciation, and we will always have their back.”
Col. Robert Hodges, the state police superintendent, told troopers in an internal email obtained by AP that the “isolated incidents” highlighted in the report “are not a fair assessment of today’s Louisiana State Police or our agency’s incredibly proud history and culture.”
The “pattern-or-practice” inquiry followed AP reporting that found Greene’s arrest was among at least a dozen cases in which state troopers and their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct in the agency. In one case, a white trooper pummeled a Black man 18 times with a flashlight following a traffic stop, leaving him with a broken jaw, broken ribs and a gash to his head.
The state police withheld body-camera footage of Greene’s death for two years, but the AP published it in 2021. The video showed troopers swarming Greene even as he appeared to raise his hands, plead for mercy and wail, “I’m your brother! I’m scared! I’m scared!” Troopers repeatedly jolted Greene with stun guns before he could even get out of the car, with one of them wrestling him to the ground, putting him in a chokehold and punching him in the face. Another called him a profanity.
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The 32-page report alleges that Greene’s death “demonstrated serious failures” that “were not isolated but part of a larger pattern or practice of law enforcement conduct that deprives people in Louisiana of their rights under the Constitution.”
The report cites one case in which a trooper “slammed a bar patron to the ground” merely for failing to provide his ID quickly enough. “Rather than explaining the reason for the request or trying to persuade the man to cooperate,” the report says, “the trooper immediately grabbed the man’s arm and forced him to the ground, injuring his nose.”
The Justice Department also examined whether state police engage in “racially discriminatory policing” but made no findings “at this time” as to whether that contributed to the misconduct.
The report recommends — but does not mandate — a long list of remedial measures, while also crediting the agency with making ”much-needed reforms after video of Mr. Greene’s death became public.”
“More reforms are needed to remedy the unlawful conduct we found,” the report says.
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