Wood Pellet Mills Are Prone to Catching Fire. Why Build Them in California?

This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate office collaboration.

Wood pastilles, by design, are very flammable. Small pieces of wooded tablet tablets, such as sawdust, are used in everything, from home heating to grills. But their flammable nature has made dangerous working conditions: since 2010, at least 52 fires have broken out in installations that make wooden pellets in the United States, according to a database of incidents compiled by the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Of the 15 largest wood pellet installations, at least eight have had fires or explosions since 2014, according to In the Environmental Integrity Project, a non-profit organization founded by a former director of the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States.

At the same time, the largest biomass company in the world, Drax, reduces trees in North America with the promise to sell them to replace fossil fuels. But even its history is checkered with accidents.

In South Shields, in the United Kingdom, wooden lozenges intended for a drax plant spontaneously burned In storage at the port of Tyne, triggering a fire that took 40 firefighters 12 hours to go out. In Port Allen, Louisiana, an installation of Drax wood button caught fire in November 2021.

Now, despite the discovery in the middle of a trial for accidental damages, Drax is displayed with a new commercial proposal; This not only involves cutting trees to make wooden pellets, but supports society, also to help stop forest fires.

In October 2023, after having bought two plots of land in California to build two pellet factories, one in the county of Tuolumne and another in the county of Lasen, the partner organization of Drax, the natural resources of Golden State, or GSNR, “a public service company for non -profit”, met residents of the county of Tuolumne to respond to the risk of Wildfire.

GSNR has since praised its close work with members of the community. However, according to Megan Fiske, who teaches rural workers of a local community college, residents living near the proposed sites of Pellet Mill were not always aware of the plans. “People who were a hundred feet from the [proposed] Pellet Plant had no idea, “said Fiske.

The two proposed factories are found in wooded areas that have been threatened by forest fires. Asked about the risks that wood dumplings manufacturing, Patrick Blacklock, Executive Director of GSNR, told Grist: “We sought to learn from these incidents. Design characteristics can greatly help reduce the risk of fire. ”

If the county representatives approve of the plan, the loggers will be allowed to take “dead or dying trees” and “wooded biomass” within a radius of 100 miles of pellet factories in the two counties, which overlap the national forest of Stanislaus and the Yosemite National Park.

Fiske said that she had seen cases, unrelated to Drax, where the loggers were not trained properly and ended up taking more wood than what should have been authorized as part of a forest fire resilience program. “There is a difference between what the loggers are told and what is happening in the field,” said Fiske. You have “inexperienced or underpaid young people, maybe English is not their mother tongue, so there are many obstacles”.