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after the world largest producer He began organizing a state-of-the-art biomass facility called Wood Pellets near Ruby Bell’s home in Faison, North Carolina. Bell told his residents about the potential impact and tried to stop the company from adding to the area’s environmental burden. It has been an uphill climb.
The retired educator remembers the day the reality of the impact was made. He spent the afternoon talking to residents about their experiences living near the new woodshed facility. When he got home, Bell said he was sniffling, his nose was running and his eyes were burning. “I thought ‘What on earth is going on?’ Then it occurred to me: I sat outside with a resident for 20 minutes. There was all this dust and my pants were covered from sitting on the chair,” she recalls. “If it’s like this after 20 minutes, I can only imagine what it’s like for the people who live there.”
Seeing experiences like Bell’s — ordinary residents thrust into the role of frontline advocates — helped draw Sherry White-Williamson deeper into environmental justice work, changing the course of her life. After decades working for federal agencies in Washington, DC, White-Williamson wanted to return to North Carolina and tackle industrial pollution. Believing he could make a bigger impact as a lawyer, he enrolled in Vermont Law School at the age of 63. After graduating, White-Williamson founded the Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN), a grassroots organization dedicated to empowering rural communities to protect their environment and health.
He said EJCAN’s role is to educate community members so they can advocate for themselves. “This work is much more effective when it’s done by someone who is actually directly affected,” she says
The group initially focused on groundwater pollution and air quality problems caused by North Carolina’s industrial hog farms and the state’s largest landfill, which exposed nearby communities to toxic chemicals. But soon, White-Williamson also began to organize against the growing wood pulp industry.
More than a decade after Enviva Biomass opened its facility, Bell’s initial skepticism has been justified. The company’s promise to bring hundreds of good-paying jobs went unfulfilled, while its operations increased noise, truck traffic and worsened the region’s air quality.
White-Williamson says the biomass rush started in Europe in the late 2000s, when the European Commission created a new climate and energy policy. It mandated a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990 levels, a 20% increase in the use of renewable energy and a 20% improvement in energy efficiency. The abundant forests of the American South will play an important role in achieving these goals. Today, the nonprofit Dogwood Alliance guess Enviva facilities in North Carolina alone consume nearly 50,000 acres of forest each year, leading to flooding and deforestation.
After the trees are harvested, they are taken to a processing plant, where they are chipped, dried and pressed into small flakes. Enviva claims that its impact on forests is minimal because it only uses wood that is unsuitable for other uses, such as tree limbs and wood left over from timber harvests. There are environmental groups such as the Dogwood Alliance and the Southern Environmental Law Center registered Evidence to the contrary, captured images of clear-cut logging and mature down trees bundled in clear rows along the perimeter of barren dirt fields to supply pellet mills.
White-Williamson noted that none of this energy is produced for US consumption. “Trees are going overseas, and trees are being cut down here,” he said, adding that these forests would otherwise store carbon.
A A growing body of research Shows that burning wood pellets emits more carbon than coal. Although trees are a renewable resource, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology calculated that in some cases, it would take more than a century for young trees to absorb excess CO.2 Forest as they replace.
The social and environmental consequences extend beyond carbon. recent Information found That Enviva’s wood-pellet facilities are 50% more likely to be located in vulnerable communities already beset by polluting industries and environmental injustice. Oversight has often failed to keep pace with these effects. There were benefits though Received several citations In 2019 the Department of Environmental Quality granted Enviva’s request to expand its production capacity over community objections to release excessive toxins.
“The story is always the same,” White-Williamson said. “Communities that don’t have power or access to power, or politicians or decision makers are always getting the short end of the stick.”
That raises substantial health risks for people living nearby, said Daniel Purifoy, professor of geography and environment at the UNC Gilling School of Public Health. The pellet manufacturing process releases a toxic mix of particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
“We’ve seen similar things happen in similar industries like lumber and wood pulp, where they grind the trees to make paper,” Purifoy said. “We already know that these pollutants have effects on the respiratory system and sinuses that can be harmful to people with asthma and any other type of respiratory illness.” Anything that’s going to create a lot of dust is creating air pollution that has the same kind of effect.”
The Southern Environmental Law Center recently led a coalition of local and regional organizers to collect quantitative data on neighborhood residents’ experiences. their The report showed That air pollution, dust, noise and traffic have a measurable impact on quality of life.
“The results of this study confirm what we’ve known for years: organic wood pellet plants cause an incredible amount of harm to surrounding communities, which are often not communities of color or low-income communities,” said SELC Staff Attorney Jasmine Washington. “When they were asked, they shared very openly about their frustration with the daily impact of these pellet mills.”
Eager to talk about their experiences after years of ignoring their concerns, respondents complained about constant plant and traffic noise, needing to wash their cars almost every day, and not feeling comfortable sitting on their balconies. Some said they were even forced to wear masks indoors.
“People are speaking up more because they now understand that there is a direct link between what they or their family is experiencing and what is happening around them,” says White-Williamson. The survey results underscore the importance of EJCAN’s work helping communities document harm and building collective strength to advocate for protection.
Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN) is a North Carolina-based nonprofit organization that works to advance environmental justice in rural communities, particularly in Sampson County. The organization supports residents facing pollution and other environmental harms by providing scientific research, water and air monitoring, education and advocacy. EJCAN helps communities access legal and technical resources, hold polluters accountable, and empower them for clean air, water and soil.
This article originally appeared on grist A https://grist.org/sponsored/the-hidden-toll-of-wood-pellet-power-ejcan/.
GRIST is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories about climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org
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This is the story Originally published by grist.
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