Environmentalists Ask for More Public Input on Pellet Plant Plans

The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors heard from a string of speakers during its public comment period for non-agenda items Oct. 22 urging it to weigh in on a project hundreds of miles away.

The nexus between the board and controversial plans to build large-scale facilities in Tuolumne and Lassen counties that would combine to manufacture a projected 1 million metric tons of wood pellets to be shipped overseas to be burned in biomass power plants is First District Supervisor and board Chair Rex Bohn, though in his role as the board’s appointed representative to the Rural County Representatives of California (RCRC). It’s through that capacity that Bohn serves on the board of Golden State Natural Resources (GSNR), a nonprofit public benefit corporation created by RCRC in 2019 to build these wood pellet facilities.

The proposed project has been a focal point of environmental and community activists in Stockton, where GSNR is proposing to build a large port facility from which to ship its pellets to Asia and Europe, as well as organizations like BioFuelWatch, an advocacy group based in the United Kingdom that works to raise awareness of climate impacts of bioenergy. Some involved in these efforts have long argued that Humboldt County has a leadership role in the project, through Bohn’s involvement, even though it is playing out hundreds of miles away and has never — and won’t — come before the board of supervisors for a vote.

The same morning the board’s Oct. 22 meeting began, GSNR released a long-delayed draft environmental impact report for the project, which had initially been expected late last year. While the document stretches more than 1,300 pages and GSNR had yet to release its appendix or required translations of its executive summary, the corporation set a 60-day public review period that will close Dec. 23 and scheduled a trio of public input meetings in six, eight and 13 days, the last of which is scheduled for the evening before Election Day.

“We’re requesting the board of supervisors take immediate measures to address the inequities that are embedded in the way the public meetings are being rushed forward, and particularly the way they’re being held in the shadow of the election,” BioFuelWatch Americas Program Coordinator Gary Hughes told the board, requesting the meetings be rescheduled to after the election and “much later” in the public comment period.

A handful of public speakers echoed Hughes’ request. After the public comment period closed, Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson noted the tight timeline and the fact that the first public input meeting is scheduled to take place before the board’s next meeting, asking staff what the process would be for the board to weigh in on the issue if it wanted to. County Administrative Officer Elishia Hayes said it could request a special meeting to discuss the issue, which the supervisors were precluded from doing at the Oct. 22 meeting because the matter was not on the agenda. Bohn then chimed in, first noting that while some of the comments had been “pointing directly” at him, 40 counties send representatives like him to RCRC. He started to say, “none of this is affecting” Humboldt County but then seemed to reconsider, saying, “well, it is affecting Humboldt.” He then said he could get GSNR staff to present the project at its scheduled Oct. 29 meeting, which Hayes later indicated she would work with him to get on the agenda.

The possibility of a special meeting to discuss the board potentially weighing in GSNR’s timeline for public meetings and comment on its draft environmental impact report was not discussed further.

On the surface, GSNR’s proposed project is pretty straightforward. The corporation aims to build large-scale pellet manufacturing plants in rural stretches of Tuolumne and Lassen counties that would turn “negative value woody biomass” — stuff like brush, ladder fuels, slash piles and dead, dying and small trees — into pellets, which would then be shipped through the Port of Stockton to Europe and Asia to be burned at power plants transitioning from coal. To hear proponents tell it, the project is a win-win-win, creating rural jobs and economic activity by safeguarding forests from catastrophic wildfires while reducing global emissions and fighting the climate crisis.

For years, however, a seemingly growing number of critics have told a much different story and raised myriad concerns.

First, there’s the general controversy surrounding biomass and whether it should be considered clean or green. Proponents argue much of biomass fuel would burn or decompose if not used for energy, and burning it in controlled facilities that filter emissions is a net win, reducing the impact while creating electricity. But others point to data showing biomass emissions are worse than those from coal plants and argue the “myth” of biomass as clean energy prevents more substantive change.

But even some of those who believe in biomass as an industry have voiced concerns over the massive emissions associated with shipping 1 million metric tons of biofuel across oceans, with Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center Executive Director John Buckley telling Courthouse News, “the huge transportation impacts appear to make the project a loser” environmentally.

Other concerns, meanwhile, exist closer to home. Residents of Stockton have charged the proposed shipping facility there could add to air pollution and bring fire dangers.

Then there are the plants themselves, which GSNR has entered into a memorandum of understanding with Drax, a British company, to operate. Drax has a checkered history with the 18 pellet plants it currently operates across the United States and Canada, having agreed to pay a combined $3.2 million in fines for a host of violations found at two of its plants in Louisiana in 2022 before receiving another notice of violation from state regulators in January alleging it had bypassed pollution controls at the two plants more than 380 times over 18 months. An investigation by the BBC also found Drax, which has received billions in government subsidies from UK taxpayers, cut down sections of rare, old-growth forest in British Columbia that the company had agreed were “no-go areas.” The company was removed from S&P Global Inc.’s Clean Energy Index in 2021, deemed to no longer fit S&P’s definition of “clean.”

Hughes, in a previous interview with the Journal, also raised concerns about the sheer scope of the project, noting 1 million metric tons of wood pellets would increase national production by 11 percent.

“It is such a huge project,” he said, adding that the plans allow the manufacturing plants to draw from a 100-mile radius and speculating Drax would soon need to start harvesting timber to meet target output. “The wood pellet production itself could become the motor driving extraction from the forests.”

It was with all these concerns in mind that a half dozen or so people addressed the board of supervisors on Oct. 22, not explicitly opposing the project but requesting the board advocate for more time to assess and comment on the draft environmental impact report.

The document itself — available for viewing at gsfahome.org/programs/ed/forestry/DEIR-GSNR.pdf — is somewhat emblematic of the tangled, quasi-public web that landed speakers in front of a board of supervisors in Humboldt County. The document was prepared by the Golden State Finance Authority (GSFA), a joint powers authority, of which Bohn is also a board member, that’s a subsidiary of RCRC, created with the mission of providing affordable housing and contributing to the “social and economic well-being” of Californians. Golden State Natural Resources, meanwhile, is a project of both GSFA and RCRC, itself a lobbying organization comprised of member rural counties and their elected officials, funded through more than $11 million in loans from GSFA.

One of the last speakers to address the board on Oct. 22, Forests Forever Executive Director Paul Hughes asked Humboldt’s supervisors to weigh in to request an immediate change to the public meeting schedule set by GSFA.

“As lead agency for this project, Golden State Finance Authority must ensure there’s adequate time for people from the public to participate meaningfully,” he said, requesting the meeting schedule be pushed back 30 to 45 days “at a minimum.”

The comments echoed those contained in a letter that the heads of a dozen environmental groups, including Tom Wheeler of Humboldt’s Environmental Protection Information Center, sent GSFA Chair and Merced County Supervisor Daron McDaniel.

As the Journal went to press Oct. 22, it was unclear whether McDaniel would reconsider the public input schedule or whether the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors would consider weighing in to ask him to do so, though it seems local residents can expect an agenda item on GSNR’s pellet plans at the board’s Oct. 29 meeting.

Thadeus Greenson (he/him) is the Journal’s news editor. Reach him at (707) 442-1400, extension 321, or thad@northcoastjournal.com.

This article appears in Why California Housing Costs are So High.