Letter to the editor: Offshore wind was our future

First published in the Brunswick Beacon, 05.14.26

I want to highlight a Billion-Dollar Betrayal of Our Coast. The Trump administration just spent nearly $1 billion of our tax dollars to kill clean energy off the North Carolina coast.

One billion dollars — not to build something, not to create jobs, not to protect our communities from rising seas and climbing electricity bills. To destroy a project that would have powered 300,000 homes.

The Carolina Long Bay offshore wind lease was our future. That project would have created 37,200 jobs during the development and construction phase, along with $3 billion in annual wages, $233 million in state tax creation and $44.9 billion in capital investment.

Now that future has been handed to a French oil company to build a gas terminal in Texas.

Our coastline deserves better. Our children deserve better. Silence from Rep. Rouzer is complicity. Apparently, Rouzer is afraid of Donald Trump.

I ask the voters of southeastern North Carolina to vote accordingly — to vote for Kimberly Hardy for the U.S. House to represent North Carolina’s 7th Congressional District.

Jeff Eighmy

Leland