Coalition calls report insufficient in protecting local environment and communities 

October 22, 2024 – SACRAMENTO, CA – Today, Golden State Natural Resources released the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) on its industrial-scale wood pellet project proposal. The project would include two industrial-scale wood pellet plants, one in the central Sierras and another in Northern California, as well as a storage and export terminal in Stockton, CA. 

A coalition of grassroots, national and international groups released preliminary reactions to this newly issued DEIR. The group reiterated previous warnings that the project will irrevocably harm California forests, communities, and climate, and will increase air pollution, particularly around the wood pellet mills and Stockton, a community which already has some of the highest pollution burdens in the state. 

GSNR has scheduled public hearings on the DEIR findings for a mere 6, 8 and 13 days after the report’s release in the communities that stand to be most impacted (in Lassen, Stockton, and Tuolumne, respectively).  In response to this woefully inadequate time allowance for assessment and review, the coalition has requested that GSNR push back the hearings until December to ensure proper opportunities for public participation. 

The coalition will provide thorough review of the DEIR and formally submit responses during the 60-day comment window. 

Here is what coalition members are saying: 
 
Gloria Alonso Cruz, environmental justice advocacy coordinator with Little Manila Rising in Stockton: “Vulnerable communities in South Stockton and nearby port neighborhoods are disproportionately affected by industrial pollution. The wood pellet industry has heightened pollution and environmental risks in Southeastern communities, and it would be dangerous to see California following the same troubling pattern. GSNR’s project threatens to undermine years of advocacy aimed at improving air quality in Stockton’s disadvantaged communities. We look forward to thoroughly reviewing the DEIR and standing alongside other coalition members to express our strong opposition.” 

Matt Holmes, project director for Valley Improvement Projects: “Placing the only export terminal in the middle of a community designated as disadvantaged under AB 617 and SB 535 flies in the face of California’s commitment to environmental justice communities like mine in Stockton. We are committed to thoroughly reviewing this draft environmental impact report: our air quality, lives, and livelihoods depend on it.” 

Nick Joslin, Forest and Watershed Watch Program Manager & Community Fire Resiliency Program Manager, Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center: “This project can only be proposed because of the faulty carbon accounting and massive taxpayer subsidies that create the facade of ‘benefits.’ It fails to recognize the massive CO2 footprint and instead spreads lies to portray itself as healthy for our forests. If we were to accept this proposal at face value, we would essentially be enriching a serial violator of regulations, the multi-national Drax, while passing off a toxic legacy to both our rural and urban communities located near the operations. All the while, society would be burdened by the explosive increase in CO2 emissions that would affect our planet for centuries.” 

Rita Vaughan Frost, Forest Advocate at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council): “Wood pellet developers like GSNR and Drax are trying to claw their way into California, a state that has never supported industrial-scale wood pellet production in the past. There’s plenty of proof that projects like these lead to destruction and danger, and we are therefore committed to ensuring the final environmental impact report fully takes these risks into account. This nefarious project will threaten the health of South Stockton neighborhoods, pollute the environment, and waste precious time and energy that California needs for legitimate wildfire prevention measures – it must be stopped.” 

Matt Simmons, Environmental Protection Information Center, Climate Attorney: “Chopping down our forests, turning them into wood pellets, and shipping them to Asia so that they can be burned for electricity doesn’t make any sense. We need to focus on developing real solutions to the climate crisis, not excuses to overlog our forests.” 

Gary Hughes, Biofuelwatch, Americas Program Coordinator: “Golden State Natural Resources rolling out the red carpet for global climate villain Drax to establish an export-oriented wood pellet industry in California should be setting off as many alarms across the state as it is around the world. The manner in which GSNR is undermining public participation by holding public meetings for the DEIR in the shadow of the election forces elected and agency officials to wake up to the evidence driving international environmental and human rights organizations to warn against California falling for the biomass delusion.” 

Mary Elizabeth, M.S., R.E.H.S., Delta-Sierra Group Conservation Chair, Sierra Club: “The impacts related to transportation, air quality, noise, and greenhouse gas emissions must be fully characterized and mitigated so we do not end up with another project approved by a CEQA lead agency by making findings of overriding significance while the community suffers the effects of unmitigated impacts.  Community health and safety are issues too often ignored for economic reasons, leaving communities like Stockton with high asthma rates, especially in children, affecting future generations with lost wages when family members have to stay home from work and increased difficulties at school with missed schoolwork.” 

Dan Howells, Climate Campaigns Director at Green America: “It is baffling that policy leaders in California are letting these projects move forward given the role the state supposedly plays in trying to mitigate climate change and working to protect communities from pollution. There are real solutions to both pollution burdens and climate change but these projects are false solutions to both.  State officials need to reject corporate greed that will only destroy more forests, pollute more communities and make climate change worse.”  

Shaye Wolf, Ph.D., climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity: “This project would pollute at every step and endanger South Stockton with fire and explosion risks. California officials should protect the climate, communities and forests by rejecting this harmful project that only distracts from real wildfire safety solutions like home hardening. The dangerous, dirty wood pellet industry has no place in a state that aims to be a climate and environmental justice leader.” 

Laura Haight, U.S. Policy Director for the Partnership for Policy Integrity: “The science is clear. The lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from logging, processing, shipping, and burning wood pellets for energy far exceed the emissions from fossil fuels for many decades or longer, well past the time when climate scientists say we must reduce emissions. California should not be supporting false climate solutions like woody biomass energy.” 

Maya Khosla, Sonoma County Climate Activist Network (SOCOCAN!): “California should be a leader in the race to replace fossil fuels, to address the climate crisis. Instead, the plan for GSNR facilities to produce about one million tons of pellets every year is  ignoring the carbon emissions arising from logging, putting communities at risk everywhere along its destructive path, and doing nothing good for the climate. The false notion of carbon neutrality achieved by treating trees and other natural forest wood as “forest waste” is a loophole that benefits logging and polluting industries.” 

Barbara Barrigan Parrilla, Executive Director, Restore the Delta: “We stand in solidarity with Gloria Alonso Cruz and the coalition of advocates opposing this project, and ask our friends, neighbors, and community leaders across the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to join us. South Stockton communities deserve climate solutions that address legacy pollution problems and that do not exacerbate them. Shipping pelletized forests overseas has no merit as a climate solution, and the community where the export terminal is proposed would see increased air pollution and minimal economic benefits.”  

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Little Manila Rising (LMR) serves the South Stockton community, developing equitable solutions to the effects of historical marginalization, institutionalized racism, and harmful public policy. LMR offers a wide spectrum of programs that address education, environment, redevelopment, and public health. LMR values all people’s unique and diverse experiences and wishes to see the residents of South Stockton enjoy healthy, prosperous lives.  

Valley Improvement Projects (VIP) strives to reach-out to low-income and working class communities, communities of color, immigrants, Spanish-speakers, LGBTQ community, religious minorities, indigenous communities, youth, elders, people with disabilities, houseless community, and many others who carry the extra burdens of our society.  

Since 1988, the Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center has played a pivotal role in preserving the integrity of Mount Shasta and its surroundings. Our bioregional perspective encompasses not only natural interconnected systems but also their cultural layers that constitute the human relationship to the land. We work through public education, science-based public policy and advocacy, legal challenges, restoration, watershed monitoring, forest stewardship, building partnerships and alliances, and engaging the local community to connect with and protect our bioregion.” 

NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 3 million members and online activists. Established in 1970, NRDC uses science, policy, law and people power to confront the climate crisis, protect public health and safeguard nature. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Beijing and Delhi (an office of NRDC India Pvt. Ltd).     

The Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) advocates for the science-based protection and restoration of Northwest California’s forests, rivers, and wildlife with an integrated approach combining public education, citizen advocacy, and strategic litigation.  

Biofuelwatch provides information and undertakes advocacy and campaigning in relation to the climate, biodiversity, land and human rights and public health impacts of large-scale industrial bioenergy.  We are a small team of staff and volunteers based in Europe and the USA.  

The Delta-Sierra Group of the Mother Lode Chapter is a regional unit of the Sierra Club that organizes outdoor activities and focuses attention on environmental issues. We all agree to practice the Sierra Club motto that you should “Explore, Enjoy and Protect the Planet.”  

Green America is the nation’s leading green economy organization. Founded in 1982, Green America provides the economic strategies, organizing power and practical tools for businesses and individuals to solve today’s social and environmental problems.  

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.  

Partnership for Policy Integrity (PFPI) uses science, litigation, policy analysis and strategic communications to promote policies that protect climate, ecosystems, and people.  

SOCOCAN (www.SonomaCountyCan.ORG), is an umbrella for 50 organizations and 300 individuals.   

Restore the Delta works in the areas of public education, program and policy development, and outreach so that all Californians recognize the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta as part of California’s natural heritage, deserving of restoration. We interface with local, state and federal agencies to advance this vision. 

Source : NRDC