Guest Post Written by Hope Taylor & Belinda Joyner of Clean Water for North Carolina

In November of 2011, Enviva, a major corporate wood pellet producer with international sales, began operations at a former Georgia Pacific sawmill in Ahoskie, NC. Residents close to the plant have faced 24/7 extreme noise levels and bright lights. They’ve lived with sticky wood dust that coats cars, buildings and lungs in just a few minutes, as well as dangerous, heavy truck traffic. While European power plants seek huge shipments of wood pellets as supposedly “greener” fuel than the coal they’ve burned in the past, eastern North Carolina has turned into the Southeast’s latest energy colony. Large swaths of clear-cut forests and enormous pellet mills, doing around-the-clock production, are now in the midst of formerly quiet communities with limited resources and political clout.

As soon as the Ahoskie mill started up, Enviva began building an even more massive plant near Garysburg, Northampton County, designed to produce over 1.1 BILLION pounds of wood pellets per year, to be shipped through a Virginia port to Europe. Belinda Joyner, Northeast Organizer for Clean Water for North Carolina, lives in Garysburg and worked with residents around the Ahoskie mill to document noise and other impacts to get the attention of state air quality regulators on the dangerous dust problem. Belinda urged her Northampton County neighbors to get involved in local planning decisions and talk to County Commissioners about their concerns.

The Garysburg plant started operations in early 2013. The mostly African-American residents living nearby were stunned by the noise, dust and traffic that suddenly slammed into their rural residential area. They began working hard with Belinda and the Concerned Citizens of Northampton County to bring the attention of local officials to the conditions that Enviva forces them to live in every day.

A new video: Injustice in Northampton about the community produced by Dogwood Alliance for their Our Forests Aren’t Fuels campaign, shows residents irate about being “robbed” of their sleep, facing dangerous traffic, health concerns and unending dust.

Recently, the County Commissioners considered a proposal to rezone a large area around the Enviva plant to be considered “heavy industrial.” This was eye-opening to local residents, who couldn’t imagine how such an industry as massive as Enviva had been allowed to locate in an area zoned for “light” industry. To prevent the entire region from becoming a “sacrifice zone,” the community has mobilized and held local officials accountable, coming in force to County Commission meetings and getting good media reports. The rezoning has been tabled indefinitely, and the community continues to document impacts of Enviva’s operations.

Working to protect vulnerable communities helps protect vulnerable natural resources, too. The few dozen jobs created in these mills will disappear quickly as the source of wood close to the mill is logged out. Just as with other extractive industries, greed and shortsighted development will only leave blighted communities with less diverse economies than before the extraction began. Rather than such “hit and run” production, Environmental Justice calls for safe, sustainable jobs AND communities!

Clean Water for North Carolina is a 30–year-old organization committed to working with vulnerable communities to protect and restore their environmental health and justice.

Watch Dogwood Alliance’s Wetlands Up in Smoke video

Belinda Joyner
Northeast Organizer
Clean Water for North Carolina

Hope Taylor
Executive Director
Clean Water for North Carolina