Vernon Parish wrote its solar rules while the internet argued about a different fight

The moratorium was two months old. The 1,000-megawatt figure circulating online does not appear in the project filings located. And Friday’s vote did not approve Sunstripe — it ended the moratorium and rewrote the parish rules the project would have to meet.

The Vernon Parish Police Jury voted unanimously Friday afternoon to amend its solar farm ordinance and lift the temporary moratorium it placed on new solar development in August, clearing a local regulatory hurdle for the proposed Sunstripe project along the Vernon-Rapides parish line.

That is what happened Friday.

A lot of the argument surrounding the project did not.

Much of what has circulated through Vernon Parish social media this month traces back to a fight that began in August, mixed with project-size and generation claims that do not line up cleanly with the filings now available.

The public record tells a more complicated story.

Sunstripe has been moving through the development process for years. Vernon Parish already had a solar ordinance. The parish paused new solar development in August, spent the next two months rewriting those rules, and on October 23 removed the moratorium after adopting the amended ordinance.

What Friday’s vote did not do was issue Sunstripe a state solar permit, approve its federal wetlands permit, grant it a tax exemption, identify a power buyer or establish that the project will generate 1,000 megawatts.

Those remain separate questions.

The moratorium came first

On August 10, 2026, the Police Jury met in special session at the request of District 5 Juror Cody Hostetler and unanimously adopted Resolution No. 38 of 2026, establishing a temporary moratorium on the development, establishment and construction of solar farms in unincorporated Vernon Parish.

Residents from the Pitkin and LaCamp areas raised concerns about the proposed Treaty Oak project, including neighboring property, wildlife, roads, decommissioning and the long-term effects of development on this scale.

Speakers included Pitkin-area landowner Nancy Whitlock, homeowner Stacy Merchant, Julie Richmond Sauer of Pitkin and State Rep. Rodney Schamerhorn.

Residents also presented jurors with a 2024 LSU study concerning solar farms and property values and specifically asked that decommissioning bonds be re-evaluated every three years instead of five.

The moratorium did not kill the project.

It gave the parish time to reconsider the rules around it.

Vernon Parish already had solar rules

The parish was not starting from zero.

Ordinance No. 9 of 2025 already required a parish site-development permit for solar farms of 1 megawatt or more.

Among its provisions were a permit fee of $1,000 plus $5 per acre, a 150-foot setback from public roads, a 50-foot setback from the front property line of adjoining property, 25-foot rear and side setbacks and a decommissioning bond re-evaluated every five years.

The debate following the August moratorium became less about whether Vernon Parish should regulate solar development and more about whether the existing ordinance was adequate for a project covering thousands of acres.

What changed Friday

The amended ordinance adopted October 23 substantially increases several protections around future solar development.

The public-road setback doubles from 150 feet to 300 feet.

The ordinance adds a 500-foot setback from the property line of private property, although the affected property owner may agree in writing to reduce that distance.

Decommissioning bonds must now be re-evaluated every three years instead of five.

Applicants must hold at least one community meeting before permit approval, with notice published twice in the parish’s official journal.

And if a permit is denied, the parish must provide written reasons. The applicant then receives 30 days to address the deficiencies and may appeal the decision to the Police Jury.

Several of those changes track concerns residents raised during the moratorium.

The September hearing changed the discussion

The ordinance rewrite followed a standing-room-only public hearing on September 21.

Treaty Oak Development Director Nick Jasman presented the project and answered questions from jurors.

Residents continued raising concerns about erosion, roads, neighboring property and the effects of industrial-scale solar development on rural land.

Stacy Merchant brought Beauregard Parish cattleman Nick Gehrig to discuss operating cattle next to the Singer solar development in Beauregard Parish.

Police Jury President Jim Tuck Jr. ultimately asked that action on the ordinance be delayed while jurors gathered more information.

The amendment later appeared on the October 19 regular-meeting agenda and again on Friday’s special-call agenda, this time alongside a separate motion to rescind the August moratorium.

Both actions passed Friday.

The important distinction is that the vote changed the regulatory framework.

It was not a final approval of Sunstripe itself.

The project is 10,356 acres — on paper

The project driving the debate is Sunstripe, being developed by Austin-based Treaty Oak Clean Energy through TO LA Solar 1, LLC.

Treaty Oak states that it is a portfolio company of Macquarie Asset Management, giving the developer access to Macquarie’s financial resources, infrastructure experience and wider energy network.

The clearest public description of Sunstripe itself comes from a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers public notice published July 13.

The filing describes:

• a 4,554-acre Phase 1 solar array and substation
• a 5,688-acre Phase 2 solar array
• a 114-acre, nine-mile generation tie line

Together, that is 10,356 acres.

The roughly 4,600-acre figure that has appeared in portions of the local discussion describes the first phase, not the entire proposed development.

The Corps identifies the project near 2307 LA Highway 121 in the Hineston area, spanning Vernon and Rapides parishes and affecting waters associated with the Calcasieu River.

The Vernon Parish side reaches into the Pitkin and LaCamp area.

The 1,000-megawatt number is a different issue

A figure of as much as 1,000 megawatts has circulated publicly around Sunstripe.

That number has not been located in a Sunstripe project filing reviewed by 337.NEWS.

The project records that do state generation figures point elsewhere.

A MISO interconnection-queue filing associated with the project lists 200 MW at the Hineston point of interconnection.

Engineering material associated with the second phase lists approximately 224 MW.

Treaty Oak has separately stated a corporate goal of delivering 1 gigawatt of power in Louisiana by the end of the decade across its Louisiana projects.

Those are not the same statement.

A statewide portfolio target is not evidence that Sunstripe itself is a 1,000-MW facility.

Treaty Oak has not publicly disclosed a final total generation capacity for Sunstripe in the records located by 337.NEWS.

That distinction matters because acreage, interconnection capacity and a developer’s statewide generation target measure different things.

Combining them can produce a compelling number without necessarily describing the project actually moving through the regulatory process.

What Sunstripe still does not have

Friday’s Police Jury action removed a local moratorium.

It did not finish the permitting process.

As of the latest records reviewed:

Sunstripe does not appear on the Louisiana Department of Conservation and Energy’s issued solar-permit list, updated September 24.

No Sunstripe-related ITEP application had been located in Louisiana’s FastLane database during the July review.

No power purchaser has been publicly identified.

Applied Digital and Cleco Power both stated publicly in July that they had no connection to the project.

And the U.S. Army Corps filing remains the principal federal permit record located for Sunstripe.

According to that filing, construction of the generation tie line would permanently convert approximately 18.5 acres of forested wetlands.

The Corps also initiated Endangered Species Act consultation concerning the Louisiana pinesnake and northern long-eared bat.

Those processes are independent of Friday’s parish vote.

The project was moving long before most people heard about it

This may be the more important part of the timeline.

Sunstripe did not begin when Vernon Parish residents first saw it discussed on Facebook.

It did not begin when the Corps published its July notice.

And it did not begin when the Police Jury enacted its moratorium in August.

The project appears in MISO’s 2023 interconnection study cycle.

MISO’s interconnection process requires developers to satisfy site-control requirements as projects move through the queue.

That places meaningful development activity well before Sunstripe’s first widely located public appearance in July 2026.

By the time many nearby residents knew enough about Sunstripe to begin arguing over it publicly, the developer had already been working through the infrastructure-development process for years.

Treaty Oak later held an informational open house at the Vernon Parish Fairgrounds on October 13.

MISO’s current schedule places an interconnection agreement no earlier than approximately August 2027.

That would put construction and first power in 2028 or later, assuming the project clears its remaining approvals and proceeds.

That is the real timeline

There are legitimate arguments for and against large-scale solar development in rural Vernon Parish.

Those arguments do not become stronger by collapsing several different questions into one.

The August moratorium was real.

So was the public opposition that helped produce it.

The amended ordinance is also real, and several of its provisions directly reflect issues residents raised.

The Sunstripe project is approximately 10,356 acres in the Corps filing.

The 1,000-MW Sunstripe claim has not been supported by any project filing located by 337.NEWS.

And Friday’s vote did not approve construction of a 10,356-acre solar farm.

It changed the parish rules under which one would have to proceed.

That distinction matters because the consequential parts of large infrastructure projects often happen long before equipment arrives.

Land gets controlled.

Interconnection positions are sought.

Environmental work begins.

Local regulations are tested.

Options and leases are negotiated.

And eventually the project becomes visible enough for the broader public to notice.

By then, a surprising amount of the story may already have happened.

The public record still has gaps — and 337.NEWS has requested them

The full executed text of Resolution No. 38 of 2026, which created the August solar moratorium, is not currently posted on the Police Jury’s website.

Neither are the final executed version of the amended ordinance adopted October 23 or the official minutes documenting Friday’s votes.

There is another question worth resolving:

Has Sunstripe actually submitted its parish solar-farm permit application yet?

337.NEWS filed a Louisiana public-records request with the Vernon Parish Police Jury seeking:

• the complete executed copy of Resolution No. 38;
• the signed and executed solar ordinance amendment adopted October 23;
• official vote records and minutes from Friday’s special meeting;
• relevant minutes from the August 10, September 21 and October 19 meetings;
• any Sunstripe solar-farm or site-development permit application, site plan, development plan, supporting exhibits or fee submission received by Vernon Parish;
• project materials submitted by Treaty Oak, TO LA Solar 1, Sunstripe or Galehead Development; and
• confirmation of whether the parish has received a formal Sunstripe solar-farm permit application at all.

The response is pending.

337.NEWS will update this reporting and its public-records archive when additional documents are produced.

Disclosure: Dalton Barron is a Louisiana-licensed real estate agent with NextHome Bayou Pines. Jeremy Jones, Broker/Owner. Licensed by the LREC. Each office is independently owned and operated. Reporting and opinions published by 337.NEWS are independent and do not represent NextHome Bayou Pines.

Read the source documents

337.NEWS does not require readers to take the article’s description of the record on faith.

The underlying Vernon Parish Police Jury agendas, proposed ordinance amendment, source PDFs, text extractions, document manifest, checksums, U.S. Army Corps material and the public-records request filed by 337.NEWS are maintained in the 337.NEWS Louisiana Public Records Archive.

Subscribe for free to get access to the records below.

Sunstripe Solar / Vernon Parish source archive:
https://github.com/337-NEWS/louisiana-public-records/tree/main/parish/vernon-parish/vernon-parish-police-jury/sunstripe-solar

Public-records request filed with Vernon Parish:
https://github.com/337-NEWS/louisiana-public-records/blob/main/parish/vernon-parish/vernon-parish-police-jury/sunstripe-solar/PUBLIC-RECORDS-REQUEST-2026-10-23.md

Treaty Oak investor material archived by 337.NEWS:
https://github.com/337-NEWS/louisiana-public-records/tree/main/other-public-documents/treaty-oak-clean-energy

The archive will be updated when Vernon Parish responds.

If you own land inside or near the Sunstripe footprint

The public fight is about the project.

For a landowner, the more consequential question may be what is actually written into the document controlling your tract.

The most important number in a solar option or lease is not always the price per acre.

A landowner in the Pitkin, LaCamp or Hineston area may be dealing with an agreement that affects the property for decades while the project itself remains years from construction — and may never be built exactly as currently proposed.

Before signing, several things deserve attention.

What exactly is being controlled?

Determine whether the document is an:

• option;
• lease;
• easement;
• purchase agreement; or
• combination of rights.

An option may give a developer years to decide whether it wants the property while restricting what the owner can do with it in the meantime.

Look at:

• how much acreage is covered;
• whether the developer may reduce or expand that acreage;
• whether access roads, transmission facilities or other infrastructure are included;
• what remains available to the landowner during the option period; and
• whether rights are exclusive.

How long can the property be tied up?

Do not stop at the first stated term.

Look for:

• option periods;
• extension rights;
• development periods;
• construction periods;
• operating terms; and
• renewal rights.

Several individually reasonable extensions can become a very long commitment when added together.

What can you still do with the property?

For rural landowners, retained use may matter as much as rent.

That can include:

• cattle;
• timber;
• hunting;
• farming;
• family access;
• future homesites;
• minerals;
• roads;
• drainage; and
• ordinary use of portions of the property outside the project footprint.

The question is not simply what the developer receives.

It is:

What do you still control after giving those rights away?

Can the agreement be assigned?

The company negotiating with a landowner today may not be the company operating the project twenty years from now.

Review:

• whether assignment is permitted;
• who may receive an assignment;
• whether the landowner must consent;
• whether notice is required; and
• whether the original company remains liable after assignment.

What happens if the project never gets built?

Infrastructure projects can remain in development for years and still never reach construction.

An agreement should make clear what happens to:

• the option;
• recorded documents;
• easements;
• access rights;
• improvements;
• damages; and
• the land itself

if development ends.

What happens at the end?

Decommissioning deserves the same attention as construction.

Vernon Parish now requires more frequent re-evaluation of decommissioning security, but the private land agreement still matters.

Landowners should understand responsibility for:

• panel and equipment removal;
• foundations;
• roads;
• underground facilities;
• drainage;
• soil restoration;
• vegetation;
• timing; and
• the possibility that the entity operating the project decades from now is not the company signing the original agreement.

What does your particular tract do for the project?

This is where ordinary price-per-acre comparisons can become misleading.

Two neighboring landowners can own the same acreage and have entirely different negotiating positions.

One tract may provide ordinary project acreage.

Another may control the only practical access.

Another may connect two larger blocks.

Another may be necessary for a transmission corridor, substation, drainage system or setback.

The useful question is not only:

What is this land worth as land?

It is also:

What does this specific tract allow the larger project to accomplish?

Get the SWLA Landowner Brief

337.NEWS maintains a private briefing for Southwest Louisiana landowners dealing with solar agreements, data-center options, pipelines and transmission easements.

It covers the kinds of agreements appearing across the region, terms that may matter more than the headline price per acre and questions worth resolving before signing.

The briefing is available by request here:

https://337.news/the-landowner-brief/

Landowners who want help identifying the public records, project filings and surrounding ownership relevant to a particular tract may also request a parcel review.

Dalton Barron
NextHome Bayou Pines
Jeremy Jones, Broker/Owner
C. 337.764.1754
O. 337.202.1018
P.O. Box 52
DeRidder, LA
Licensed by the LREC
Main Office: DeRidder, LA
Each office is independently owned and operated.