Stockton should be open-minded and accommodating toward new industry and jobs — but the city need never become an environmental sacrifice zone.
Currently a British biofuel giant and its California partner are proposing to build two huge mills in northern California forests and to ship wood pellets to a planned storage/export facility at the Port of Stockton.
“If we can have healthier forests, green power, and that be done in a carbon-negative program, we want to do that,” said Patrick Blacklock, president of Golden State Natural Resources, a quasi-governmental nonprofit dedicated to boosting the economies and quality of life in rural California.
Environmentalists say talk of healthier forests and carbon reduction is greenwashing by a corporation that will chew up the state’s precious forests for profit and pollute Stockton in the process.
“I think it’s important for the community of south Stockton, because that’s where the port is, to know we still have time to say we do not want this in our community,” said Gloria Alonso Cruz, the environmental justice advocacy coordinator with Little Manila Rising.
Alonso Cruz wrote a guest editorial in the Sacramento Bee calling the proposal by GSNR and Britain’s Drax, the world’s second-largest wood pellet biofuel company, a potential “environmental justice tragedy.” It would subject Stockton’s underserved communities of color to “a significant increase in noise, industrial traffic and toxic air pollution.”
The project calls for Drax to build two industrial plants in Tuolumne and Lassen county forests, produce 1 million metric tons of wood pellets a year, and ship them by train to Stockton for export overseas.
The Tuolumne/Lassen components deserve careful evaluation, and they’ll get it in a series of stories running in Stocktonia. For my part, I just want to touch on the Stockton piece.
In a way, the scrutiny is premature. GSNR has yet to release its draft environmental impact report. But the DEIR has been pushed back repeatedly since early 2024. This issue needs to be on the community’s radar.
The market factor behind this project is the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Thirty nations agreed to limit global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Numerous European and Asian nations seek to do this by switching from coal to biofuel.
It’s debatable whether biofuel is cleaner — the scientific understanding is evolving — but that’s off-topic for the proposed Stockton facility. The facility, which calls for storage domes, will create eight jobs (elsewhere, the project would create 55 in Tuolumne, 65 in Lassen, plus supply chain jobs such as trucking, stevedoring, and forest workers, not to mention the initial construction jobs), said Carolyn Jhajj, communications director for Rural County Representatives of California, a GSNR offshoot.
Environmentalists estimate this huge operation would require 10,000 train cars and up to 28-30 additional bulk cargo ships a year to the Port, an estimated 23% boost in Port shipping traffic.
This would increase Port revenue. It would also further pollute Stockton’s dirty air and crank up the noise to adjacent neighborhoods such as Boggs Tract and everyplace else the trains traverse.
Perhaps a bigger concern is the wood-pellet industry’s scofflaw culture, said Rita Vaughan Frost, a forest advocate with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“This industry has a history and a pattern of not following environmental regulations,” Frost said. “This should be enormously concerning to the people of Stockton.”
One concern about storage domes is the dust — particulate matter so small it can be inhaled and cause serious health problems.
· Residents of Wilmington, N.C., told NRDC that sawdust escaping from storage blankets homes and cars, daily, even the fur of pets.
· In 2022 Drax agreed to pay a settlement of $1.6 million for air pollution violations in Bastrop, Louisiana.
· And another $1.6 million for air pollution violations on Urania, Louisiana.
· Which followed a $2.5 million fine for air pollution violations in Gloster, Mississippi. Both the Glouster and Bastrop pellet plants are sited next to Black communities with high poverty rates, leading to accusations of environmental racism.
Unearthed magazine reported, “Gloster residents … complained of breathing difficulties requiring inhalers or oxygen tanks, experiencing dizzy spells, rashes, nosebleeds and occasional burning sensations and irritated eyes when standing outdoors.”
Drax countered, “Through our operations in Louisiana and Mississippi, Drax supports more than 1,200 jobs and contributes $175m to the region’s economy,” adding it takes its environmental responsibilities “very seriously.”
Yet in 2010 the DS&P Dow Jones Indices delisted Drax from its Global Clean Energy Index over concerns about Drax’s environmental performance.
Other biomass corporations run pellet mills and export facilities in the United States.
· In July, a conveyor sparked a fire at a Savanna, Ga., port pellet storage facility, which led to an explosion. Numerous first responders were sent to the hospital and the city was covered in smoke.
· In 2016, a fire in wood-pellet silos in Port Arthur, Texas, smoldered for around 100 days. “The smoke filled plaintiffs’ homes,” according to a lawsuit. “The smoke saturated not only the homes, but also their cars, clothing and other personal belongings. Plaintiffs could not sleep due to smoke and its smell entering their bedrooms.”
Blacklock parried these offenses by saying Drax has learned from its mistakes.
As has GSNR. “We’re trying to do our best to learn from all of (that) and incorporate the latest, most rigorous controls,” he said. “Which is why we’re spending extra time on the draft Environmental Impact Report so others can evaluate that.”
GSNR provided a sample of safety measures from its EIR.
The other wood-pellet outfits in the southern and eastern United States are “entirely different models,” Blacklock said. They clear-cut land for profit. “Our mission is forest resilience partnering with the (U.S.) Forest Service to advance it to 1 million acres a year” of thinned forests less prone to catastrophic wildfires, Blacklock said.
Plus, GSNR, being nonprofit, can funnel profits into the Stockton community, he said. GSNR has partnered with the Reinvent South Stockton Coalition to explore beneficiaries.
On the other hand, GSNR opposed the prevailing wage bill for forest products in 2022.
“There was a GSNR concern on the impact it would have on forest resilience projects,” Blacklock said.
Where is Stockton’s Port on all this? Nowhere yet, said Port Director Kirk DeJesus.
“We don’t have a plan for them, a request for a lease, we don’t have anything from them,” said DeJesus. “We’re kind of in the dark like everybody else.”
He added, “Our perspective — obviously, I live here in Stockton, right across from the port — I’m a concerned citizen apart from from everything else — but you know our charter: we need to generate jobs and revenue. If we can do that safely, we want to.”
The port can’t, said Alonso Cruz.
“We have an opportunity to pursue something that is greener and push the Port of Stockton to support projects that don’t have such high detrimental impact for the community,” she said. “We can do better.”
Perhaps it’s wrongheaded to examine the Stockton facility out of the context of GSNR’s overall plan, which is to recruit Drax into a financially sustainable operation that supposedly inoculates forests against catastrophic wildfires while providing economic benefits to rural counties. But Stockton needs to know if it’s a beneficiary of the plan or a sacrificial goat.
GSNR’s draft EIR is scheduled to come out in October.
Fitzgerald’s column runs on Wednesdays. On Twitter and Instagram as Stocktonopolis. Email: mfitzgeraldstockton@gmail.com