By Michél Legendre and Matt WilliamsShareNewsweek is a Trust Project memberChildren are playing in their yards, but they’re struggling to breathe. The air is filled with wood dust. Residents have endured years of asthma, bronchitis and cardiovascular disease linked to pollutants. This is Gloster, Miss., a town of 897 people, but it could be one of several towns across the U.S. South where people rely on oxygen tanks just to get through the day, and neighbors check in on each other because of pollution from wood-pellet biomass plants.
Drax is a U.K.-based biomass giant that turns 3 million tons of U.S. wood into small wood pellets, ships them overseas and burns them in a British power station to generate electricity. Their story exposes how America’s new forest policies could inadvertently favor a global industry that’s harming American communities.
...In addition to devastating forests, Drax has racked up more than 11,000 environmental permit violations in the U.S. It has paid nearly $3 million in fines in Gloster alone, small change against the over $1 billion (2024 figures) in annual subsidies it collects from U.S. and U.K. taxpayers.
In October, Drax Group won its appeal for a permit to raise emissions at its Gloster, Miss. pellet plant, after the permit was initially denied in April. Shortly after the October decision, residents filed a lawsuit against the company. As Dr. Krystal Nicole Martin, executive director of Greater Greener Gloster, said: “We have lived under Drax’s cloud for too long. It’s past time for accountability.”
While Mississippi regulators are loosening oversight, federal policymakers are making it easier for biomass companies to source wood from public lands. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued an “emergency” declaration that could fast-track logging across nearly 60 percent of national forests. Additionally, the USDA aims to repeal the 2001 Roadless Rule that established prohibitions on road construction, road reconstruction and timber harvesting in nearly 60 million acres of inventoried roadless areas.
According to new Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) analysis, this year’s USDA declaration puts a substantial fraction of the few remaining mature and old-growth forests across the United States at risk, while sacrificing the critical role these forests play in wildfire prevention and watershed protection.
Across the Atlantic, Drax’s story is unraveling, and the U.K. government is clearly coming round to the idea that burning forests for fuel is not clean energy. The Financial Conduct Authority, which has the power to impose criminal sanctions, is currently looking into the company. Ofgem, the U.K. energy regulator, has fined Drax for its poor data on biomass from forests. The U.K. government is phasing down Drax’s subsidies. After 2027, payments will be halved, with the plant’s generation capped and subject to stricter compliance.
But Gloster residents can’t look to the U.K. for an end to their suffering any time soon—biomass subsidies in the U.K. will continue until at least 2031. As the U.K. tightens rules and probes the legality of the wood-pellet biomass industry, we must encourage Washington and environmental regulators across the country to do the same. These subsidies are not just wasted money; they are active investments in harming public health. Communities in Gloster and across the South endure the reality of higher asthma rates, diminished quality of life and razed forests.
If the lawsuit brought by Mississippi’s residents succeeds, it will send a signal that communities can challenge companies that violate their right to breathe safely. But the deeper question remains: Will the U.S. government subsidize an industry that clears forests, violates our air pollution rules and makes people sick? Will we embolden foreign interests already eyeing additional millions of acres in public land?
Communities in Gloster, regulators in England and scientists across the globe are telling the same story: Forests are more valuable standing than burned. Domestic air-quality policy should reduce, not worsen, pollution for the very people it is meant to protect—and subsidies should not reward destruction.
Michél Legendre is the campaigns director at Dogwood Alliance.
Matt Williams is a U.K.-based forest advocate at Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
The views expressed in this article are the writers’ own.
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