This story originally Appears in Grist It is part of Climate desk collaboration.
Wood pellets are highly flammable by design. Small pieces of compressed woody leftovers, like sawdust, are used in everything from heating to grilling in your home. However, their flammable nature is made for dangerous working conditions. Since 2010, at least 52 fires have been occurring at timber pellet facilities across the United States, according to a database of incidents compiled by the Southern Environmental Law Center.
Of the 15 largest timber pellet facilities, at least eight people have had a fire or explosion since 2014. According to To the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit organization founded by a former director of the US Environmental Protection Agency.
At the same time, Drax, the world’s largest biomass company, is cutting trees across North America, pledging to sell them as fossil fuel alternatives. However, even that track record has been checked in accidents.
At South Shields, UK, wooden pellets aimed at Drax plants Burn spontaneously During storage at Tyne Port, 40 firefighters started a 12-hour firefighter firefighter fire. In Port Allen, Louisiana, Drax’s wooden pellet facility was hit by fire in November 2021.
Now, despite finding himself in the midst of a lawsuit over an accidental fire damage, Drax is pushing a new business proposal. The company claims to not only cut down the trees to make the wood, but also to help stop wildfires.
In October 2023, after purchasing two land in California and building two pellet plants, one in Tuolumne County and one in Lassen County, met with residents of Tuolumne County, a partner organization of Drax, or Tuolumne County, to address concerns about making Wild Fellets available.
The GSNR has since promoted close work with community members. However, residents living near the proposed pellet factory site were not always aware of the plans, according to Megan Fisuke, who directs rural workers at local community colleges. “People 100 feet away from [proposed] The pellet factory didn’t know about that,” Fisuke said.
Both of the proposed factories are located in forest areas threatened by wildfires. “We wanted to learn from these incidents. The design features can go a long way in reducing the risk of fire,” said Patrick Blackrock, executive director of GSNR, when asked about the risks that wood pellets would be equipped.
If a county representative approves the plan, loggers will be permitted to obtain “dead or dying trees” and “woody biomass” from within a 100-mile radius of a pellet mill within the two counties, which overlap with the Stanislaus National Forest and Yosemite National Park.
Fisuke said he saw an instance that was unrelated to Drax, whose loggers were not properly trained and ended up taking away more wood than would have been allowed in the wildfire resilience scheme. “There’s a difference between what the logger is being told and what happens on the ground,” Fisuke said. You have “someone who is underpaid or young people. English is probably not their primary language, so there are many barriers.”
