The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality's (MDEQ) Permit Board has denied Drax's application to become a “major” source of Hazardous Air Pollutants, or HAPs, reported Mississippi Today.
The new permit would have allowed the company’s wood pellet facility, Amite BioEnergy, to release more potentially harmful air pollutants than what its currently allowed under state regulation.
Drax opened the facility just outside downtown Gloster in southwest Mississippi in 2016. The company turns locally sourced wood into pellets that it then ships to other countries for their clean energy goals.
Drax and other wood pellet companies have faced a wave of both local and international scrutiny for repeated air emissions violations across multiple Southern states.
In 2020, MDEQ fined Drax $2.5 million for underestimating certain pollutants it had released into the air since 2016, one of three times the state has fined the facility and one of the largest such penalties in the state’s history.
Last year, the state fined Drax $225,000 for releasing over 50% more than its permitted limit of HAPs into the air.
Shortly after, MDEQ announced Drax’s application to upgrade the facility from a “minor” source of HAPs to a “major” source. Doing so would have removed the limit over how much HAPs the facility could release, but it also would have put in stricter regulation over the rate at which it released HAPs.
Jaricus Whitlock, MDEQ’s Air Division Chief, explained that Drax has come into compliance since the fine by lowering production. Drax officials, though, told the Permit Board that in order to produce as much as its permit allows, it would need to exceed the “minor” source allowance for HAPs.
After some confusion among the Permit Board over whether Drax’s actual output of HAPs would increase, Whitlock clarified: “There is a guarantee that actual emissions will increase (if Drax was given “major” source status), and based on my speculations, (HAP emissions) could very likely increase above those thresholds (that Drax currently has to stay under).”
Residents and activists argued that Drax shouldn’t simply get to raise the amount of pollution it can release because it failed to meet its current limit. Jimmy Brown, a Gloster resident and vocal critic of the wood pellet facility, compared Drax’s request to getting caught speeding and then asking the Department of Transportation to raise the speeding limit.
Before it voted, the Permit Board heard impassioned pleas from Gloster residents who believe Drax’s pollution has caused them respiratory issues. A group of residents took a charter bus early Tuesday morning to attend the hearing.
“How many of us have to die for these pellets to be made?” cried Carmella Causey, who said she has to carry an oxygen tank with her everywhere she goes.
Out of six voting, five Permit Board members sided with denying Drax’s permit request, and one abstained. The room in MDEQ’s downtown Jackson building filled with applause after the vote. Chairman Doug Mann cautioned that MDEQ may revisit the issue in the future.
“Drax has a lot of resources and a lot of scientists, and there’s probably a way we can clean all this up,” Mann told the room.
Mississippi denies Drax’s application to become a “major” source of Hazardous Air Pollutants
