BATON ROUGE — Not a drop-on-two-knees plea by Rep. Romo Romero, D-New Iberia, at the State Capitol Wednesday morning, nor even a two-hour-plus testimonial and PowerPoint presentation by proponents of a bill to curtail drilling at Lake Peigneur could sway the House Natural Resources Committee.

Only two out of 11 committee members voted for House Bill 617, which would have prohibited drilling in and around Lake Peigneur or the Jefferson Island salt dome, except for directional drilling outside the lake’s perimeter.

Some of the approximately two dozen “Save Lake Peigneur” residents, who had made a caravan trip to the State Capitol to try to convince legislators that allowing the drilling of two new underground natural-gas caverns was a potential disaster in the making, visibly slumped as the vote became obvious at about 12:30 p.m. Wednesday.

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Clara Baudoin, D-Carencro, and Mickey Frith, D-Abbeville, voted in favor of the bill.

The legislation targeted AGL Resources, which has two underground storage caverns filled with natural gas under the 1,300-acre lake and wants to build two more. But that’s a dangerous proposition, lake-area residents said, for the 5,000 people who live within a three-mile radius of the lake at the Iberia-Vermilion border.

“Big oil” interests had a hand in its defeat, said bill author state Rep. Sydnie Mae Durand, D-St. Martinville, minutes after the vote.

“The hearing was good, but you knew by the questions (from committee members) where things were going,” Durand said. “You had a few members who actually walked out to get some of the questions to ask (from oil interests).”

Durand criticized AGL’s argument of economic development, which she said would add 75 temporary construction jobs and three permanent jobs.

“What is that? You have people fearing that something’s going to happen,” Durand said. “Until we find out what those bubbles are they should not be in that lake at all. I don’t care who you are.”

Minutes earlier, Romero derided the “humbug” that he heard from legislators during the hearing. He told the committee this was a local bill and he never voted against such a bill for his cohorts, “even when it was politically incorrect.”

“We honor local bills,” he said. “Apparently some people on the committee are obligated to big oil and gas. What this bill is all about is representing our people. It’s easy if it’s somebody else’s backyard for you to ask all these questions.”

Then he said he would do something he had not done in 50 years, the last time being when he proposed to his wife. To laughter in legislative chambers, Romero got on his knees and pleaded one last time for the bill.

State Rep. Troy Hebert, D-Jeanerette, told the panel that if someone lived in Alexandria or Shreveport a disaster at Lake Peigneur would not affect them, but it would affect “the people behind me today.”

Several times during the hearing, bill proponents mentioned the 1980 Texaco drilling disaster at Lake Peigneur that made national news when a hole was punched in the salt dome beneath the lake, causing a massive whirlpool that sucked in barges, equipment and vegetation.

Engineer Steve Langlinais also noted a 1970 explosion. He said AGL had never mentioned 1,300-feet deep “shear zones” and several “bore holes” during its application process to the state — both events being possible conduits for a pressurized force to cause bubbling at the surface a half-mile away. He said natural gas could be leaking, and AGL would not know about it.

Langlinais said the zones, the bore holes and a “meander belt fault intersection” at the current caverns’ site make the sites inappropriate locations.

Langlinais’ lengthy presentation did not convince Rep. William B. Daniel IV, R-Baton Rouge.

“I don’t believe it’s from the gas-storage facility,” said Daniel, who offered a substitute motion to defer — in effect, kill — the bill.

Jim Welsh, commissioner’s of DNR’s Office of Conservation, said the state Department of Natural Resources sent divers in earlier this year and “they saw nothing there that was unusual” regarding the bubbling events.

Jefferson Island Storage and Hub operations supervisor Jason Mire told members that, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, salt-dome storage is the safest means of storing natural gas. No incidents have occurred since the two older ones were built in 1994. AGL environmental health director Tim Goodson said HB 617’s passage would set a precedent “as it would undermine the current regulatory and administrative process already outlined in Louisiana law.”

“It would be an end-around” to current laws for existing companies in Louisiana, Goodson warned.

After the bill’s defeat, AGL’s Jack Holt said the vote “was definitely a step in the right direction and it will secure our energy needs for the future.”

But a disappointed Lake Peigneur resident, Noicy Langlinais, said he had never really seen the influence of oil interests in person before.

Lake Peigneur resident Nara Crowley said residents would be meeting again a 7 tonight at Rip Van Winkle Gardens at Jefferson Island to discuss their next move. The public is invited.