Europe’s appetite for wood clashing with Black communities in S.C.
Europe's effort to make energy from American wood pellets is drawing complaints from Black community leaders in South Carolina, where manufacturers are expanding to produce more of the tiny wood chips.
In Greenwood County, one large wood pellet factory is increasing the size of its operation and another mill is on the drawing board. A third pellet mill, backed by local and state politicians, plans to open next summer in Florence County.
South Carolina has at least six wood pellet plants that have either been established or proposed in recent years, according to environmental groups and state regulators.
The Rev. Leo Woodberry and some other African American leaders say Europe's desire for wood pellets is coming at the expense of South Carolina's natural resources and disadvantaged communities.
Pellet mills grind up limbs, stumps and, in some cases, whole trees to make small chips that fuel woodburning power plants overseas. In the process, they release air pollution, often after locating near African American communities that are particularly vulnerable to contaminants from the plants, some researchers have found.
"The markets for wood pellets are in Europe and in Asia, and here we have our forests, our natural surroundings being exploited," Woodberry said, noting during an online community forum earlier this month that natural resources are "just being eliminated and increasing risk for people."
Woodberry, who works on environmental justice issues for the nonprofit New Alpha Community Development Corp., said Black populations often are disproportionately affected by air pollution from wood pellet plants.
African Americans, for instance, suffer more respiratory problems than others, making the rise of pellet plants an issue that should not be ignored, said Florence Anoruo, an environmental scientist at S.C. State University.
She and Woodberry spoke during an online community meeting earlier this month about a proposed wood pellet plant in the Effingham community of rural Florence County.
Announced last summer, the $5.4 million plant would be built in a county with a higher percentage of African Americans than most South Carolina counties. A construction permit application is under review by state regulators.
This comes as President Joe Biden's administration is placing increasing emphasis on environmental justice issues across the country.
Industries that release air and water pollution often are accused of locating in poor, disadvantaged communities that have trouble stopping them. In recent years, critics have taken aim at wood pellet mills in the Carolinas and other southern states.
Across the Southeast, nearly two dozen wood pellet plants have popped up in the past decade, The New York Times reported recently. The industry has increasingly moved into the South because state and local leaders are accommodating and the region has a thriving forest products industry.
Contaminants released from wood pellet plants include hazardous air pollutants, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and fine grained soot, all with health implications. Tiny soot particles, for instance, can lodge in people's lungs and make breathing difficult.
The Southern Environmental Law Center lists a half-dozen wood pellet plants that have either opened or are proposed for South Carolina. But there may be more.
Those include an operating plant just inland from Hilton Head Island that, according to the Island Packet, agreed earlier this year to pay $15,000 in fines for breaking air pollution laws.
Another plant is proposed for the community of Ninety Six, in the same county as the expanding Greenwood pellet plant in northwest South Carolina.
A DHEC official acknowledged recently that the Ninety Six proposal will be soon put on public notice. The request from U.S. Biomass now is under review, DHEC spokesman Derrek Asberry said. The mill needs DHEC pollution permits to open.
An official with the proposed mill could not be reached this week, but he told Greenwood County officials last year that the facility would not have emissions or make much noise. A permit application to state regulators indicates the facility would be a moderate-sized pellet mill, which would produce material for "pellet-fired wood stoves and similar equipment."
Carolina pellets Some studies show that, while not all wood pellet plants are in communities of color, many of them are.
Of 32 Southeastern pellet production facilities, 18 were located in environmental justice communities., generally described as areas with high poverty and high non-white populations, a 2018 study concluded.
In North Carolina and South Carolina, every wood pellet mill is located in a disadvantaged community, many of them non-white, according to the study from the Dogwood Alliance, a regional organization that promotes forest protection, and a Tufts University researcher.
The pellet plant that is expanding in Greenwood, operated by Enviva, lies in a community of color, the alliance said.
More than half of the people who live within a mile of the plant are nonwhite and about 75 percent are low-income, according to data the group pulled from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's environmental justice screening tool.