Wood Pele factories are vulnerable to the fire on the fire. Why do you build it in California?

This story is originally Appear Barrier It is part of Climate cooperation.

Woodencia, by design, is very flammable. Small pieces of compressed wood residue, such as sawdust, are used in everything from home heating to barbecue. But its flammable nature has been made for dangerous working conditions: since 2010, at least 52 fires broke out in the facilities that make wood pellets throughout the United States, according to a database of accidents collected by the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Among the 15 largest wooden Pele facilities, at least eight facilities had fires or explosions since 2014, According to To the Environmental Integrity Project, a non -profit institution founded by a former director of the US Environmental Protection Agency.

At the same time, Drax, the world’s largest biomus company, reduces trees across North America with a promise to sell them as an alternative to fossil fuel. But even the busy record with accidents.

At South Shelds, UK, wooden pellets for Drax Factory Combustion While storing it in the port of Tin, a fire started 40 firefighters to extinguish it. In Port Allen, Louisiana, the Drax Wood Pele facility explodes in November 2021.

Now, although she finds itself in the midst of a lawsuit on the accidental damage of the fires, Drax presses a new work proposal; It does not involve cutting trees only to make wood carcinogenic, but, as the company says, to help stop forest fires.

In October 2023, after the purchase of two lands in California to build two Pele Mills, one in Toulouin Province and another in Lasin Province, the Drax partner organization, or Golden State Resources, or GSNR, “managed to generally non -profit interest,”

GSNR has since promoted its close work with members of society. However, according to Megan Fisk, who guides rural workers at the local community college, the population who lives near the proposed Pele’s mill sites were not aware of the plans. “The people who were a hundred feet from the Pele (the proposal) factory have no idea about it,” Fisk said.

Each of the proposed mills in the forest areas threatened by forest fires. When asked about the risks that are classified as a wood carcinogen, Patrick Blackook, CEO of GSNR, told Grute, “We have sought to learn from these accidents. Design features can come a long way to reduce the danger of fire.”

If the boycott representatives agree to the plan, Loggers will be allowed to take “dead or available trees” and “wooden biomass” from within a 100 -miles radi circuit of Pele’s mills inside the two provinces, which interferes with the National Stanislaus Forest and the Yosemite National Garden.

Fisk said that she had been seen cases, which have nothing to do with Drax, as the login operations were not properly trained and ended up taking wood more than it should have been allowed under the burning flexibility scheme. “There is a difference between what is being told Lujizis and what is happening on the ground,” Fisk said. You have “inexperienced or young people who get low salaries, and perhaps the English language is not their first language, so there are a lot of barriers.”