This story originally appeared on Gist and is part of the Climate desk Cooperation.
Wooden bullets, by design, are very flammable. The small pieces of compressed wooden remains, such as a saw, are used in all, from home heating to grid. But their flaming nature has made dangerous working conditions: since 2010 at least 52 fires have exploded at the facilities that make wooden bullets across the United States, according to a database of incidents compiled by the Southern Media Law Center.
Of the 15 largest wooden bullet facilities, at least eight had fires or explosions since 2014, According to To the Project on Environmental Integrity, a non -profit founded by a former director of the US Environmental Protection Agency.
At the same time, the world’s largest biomass company, Drax, cuts trees across North America with a promise to sell them as a replacement for fossil fuels. But even its track is controlled with accidents.
In southern shields, UK, wooden bullets intended for Drax plant spontaneously burned While storing at the port of Tyne, igniting a fire, which took 40 firefighters 12 hours to extinguish. In Port Allen, Louisiana, Drax Wood Pelt facility broke into flames in November 2021.
Now, despite finding himself in the midst of a complaint about fire injuries, Drax is pushing with a new business proposal; It involves not only cut trees to make wooden bullets, but, the company argues, also to help stop wild fires.
In October 2023, after the purchase of two parcels of land in California to build two Pellet mills, one in Tuolumne Government and another in Lassen Prefecture, the Drax partner, a Golden State Natural Resources, or GSNR, a “unprofitable public benefit corporation”, met with the residents of Untime, as a manufacturing manufacturing manufacturing manufacturing. Manufacturing manufacturing manufacturing of the process of manufacturing wooden wooden companies on how the process of manufacturing the prefecture of the prefecture.
GSNR has since presented his close work with community members. However, according to Megan Fiske, who instructs rural workers at a local community college, residents living near Pellet Mill’s proposed websites were not always aware of the plans. “People who were a hundred feet away from the [proposed] Pellet Plant had no idea about it, “said Fiske.
Both proposed mills are in forests that were threatened by wild fires. When asked about the risks that wooden bullets manufacture, Patrick Blacklock, executive director of GSNR, told Grist, “We were looking to learn from those incidents. The projects can make a long way to mitigate the risk of fire.”
If county representatives approve of the plan, the loggers will be allowed to take “dead or dying trees” and “woody biomasses” from within a 100-mile ray of the Pelt Mills in the two counties, which overlap with the Stanislaus National Forest and the Yosemite National Park.
Fiske said she saw cases, unrelated to Drax, where loggers were not trained correctly and ended up taking more wood than should be allowed under a wild resistance scheme. “There is a difference between what is said to the loggers and what happens on the ground,” said Fiske. You have “inexperienced or young people who are unpaid, maybe English is not their first language, so there are many barriers.”
