JACKSON, Miss.—On the morning of Oct. 14, Carmella Causey exited a coach bus in downtown Jackson and slowly made her way across the street toward the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality building.
The Gloster, Mississippi, resident uses a walking aid and a portable oxygen machine to help her breathe, but she was determined to make the nearly two-hour journey to the capital city. Over the next two days, state regulators would decide whether to authorize new permits for a controversial biomass facility in her hometown, and Causey was intent on testifying against the plant and its operators.
“I’m feeling victorious,” Causey told the Mississippi Free Press on her walk over to the MDEQ office. She blames emissions from the plant for her respiratory problems, and she expressed hope that the state would protect her and her neighbors by rejecting the requested permits.
That feeling of optimism was short-lived. The following afternoon, Mississippi’s Environmental Quality Permit Board unanimously approved biomass producer Drax’s bid to increase emissions at the Gloster plant, reversing an earlier decision that Causey and others had celebrated as a win for environmental justice.
At the close of an evidentiary hearing spanning nearly 15 hours, the permit board granted Drax’s request to reclassify its Amite BioEnergy facility as a “major” source of hazardous air pollutants, or HAPs. The new operating permit raises the threshold for toxic emissions allowed at the site but mandates stricter pollution controls and compliance testing.
The two-day hearing followed a similar format to a formal court proceeding, with Drax’s legal team offering evidence and witness testimony in support of the new permits. Intervening at the hearing was Greater Greener Gloster, a community organization made up of residents and allies who oppose the plant’s activities in the majority-Black town. Supporters of both parties attended the hearing, many of them sporting badges and signs denoting their affiliations and desired outcomes.
For nearly a decade, a subset of Gloster residents has argued that the Amite BioEnergy plant’s operations have degraded local air quality and jeopardized their health, leading to a spike in respiratory illnesses like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Regulators have penalized the site multiple times for violating its permits and exceeding emissions limits, and Drax has paid nearly $3 million in fines since the facility opened in 2015.
The permit board initially rejected Drax’s reclassification request back in April, citing concerns over the plant’s repeated violations and ability to control emissions moving forward. But the regulatory body reversed course on Oct. 15, indicating that the information presented at the hearing “sufficiently addressed” those doubts.
“In order to ensure that Amite Bio continues its operations … the permit board unanimously voted to reverse its previous denial,” Kim Turner, a Mississippi assistant attorney general who presided over the hearing, said while announcing the decision. The board is made up of seven officials from multiple state agencies, including the Department of Health and the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks.
The permit board’s reversal did not surprise Greater Greener Gloster founder Krystal Martin, who described the about-face as the inevitable outcome of a community group challenging a corporate giant like Drax.
“We’re a small, rural, black community,” she told the Mississippi Free Press on Oct. 17. “We don’t have fancy lobbyists or billions of dollars. All we have is our truth and our stories and our testimony.”
Drax’s Argument
United Kingdom-based Drax makes compressed wood pellets out of trees used to generate electricity—a process that releases volatile organic compounds and known carcinogens like formaldehyde. In recent years, the wood pellet biomass industry has come under scrutiny for saddling rural communities with air and noise pollution and overstating the environmental benefits of its product. While biomass has long been touted as a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels, growing evidence suggests that making and burning wood pellets for energy yields more greenhouse gas emissions on a cumulative basis.
“There has been a misguided move to cut down whole trees or to divert large portions of stem wood for bioenergy, releasing carbon that would otherwise stay locked up in forests,” more than 500 scientists wrote in an open letter to the Biden administration and other world leaders in 2021. “The result of this additional wood harvest is a large initial increase in carbon emissions, creating a “carbon debt,” which increases over time as more trees are harvested for continuing bioenergy use.”
Drax used the October evidentiary hearing to highlight recent efforts to manage pollution at its Gloster site. Over the last five years, the company has spent over $70 million on upgrades to the facility, including installing an emissions control system that converts VOCs and other pollutants into water vapor and carbon dioxide, explained Drax Executive Vice President of Pellet Operations Matt White. The technology will help the plant remain in compliance with its new permit and achieve an emissions destruction efficiency of 96%—higher than any other wood pellet plant in North America, he said.
“For the past six years, we’ve worked really hard to build a culture of operating safely,” White told the permit board during his testimony on Oct. 15. “We worked really hard to upgrade our facility (and) upgrade our talent.”
White and other Drax officials also touted the Amite BioEnergy plant’s contributions to the local economy. The facility helps keep neighboring sawmills afloat and supports the area’s timber industry by buying wood waste that would otherwise end up in landfills, White told the permit board. He added that 75% of the plant’s 65 employees live within 11 miles of the site, although he could not say how many actually reside in Gloster.
Drax executives say the new permit will allow the facility to increase production without violating emissions limits. The plant has had to curtail its wood pellet output to maintain compliance with its current permit, and being reclassified as a major HAP source will help align production with emissions moving forward, explained Amber Bouska, Drax’s North American vice president of Health, Safety and Environment.
“This permit will allow our plant to continue to operate, enabling us to continue providing much needed well-paying jobs in this rural corner of Mississippi,” spokesperson Michelli Martin said in an emailed statement following the permit board’s decision on Oct. 15. “MDEQ’s conditions, inspection regime and our commitment to continue to invest in compliance and improving operational standards will ensure that Drax at Amite operates as safely and efficiently as possible.”
Residents Respond
Greater Greener Gloster has argued that Mississippi regulators should not reward past noncompliance at Drax’s Amite BioEnergy plant by allowing it to release more hazardous pollutants.
Throughout the evidentiary hearing, attorneys representing the nonprofit highlighted a series of violations and enforcement actions against the facility dating back to 2016, including failing to properly track or report emissions.
These failures led Amite BioEnergy to exceed legal limits for VOC releases from 2016 through 2019, MDEQ documents showed, triggering a $2.5 million penalty in 2020 that ranks among the largest fines ever imposed by the agency. Two years later, HAP emissions at the plant were found to be above the threshold stipulated in its permit, resulting in a $225,000 fine.
“Since Amite began operating in 2015, it has a pattern of non-compliance,” Allison Brouk, a senior attorney at Earthjustice representing Greater Greener Gloster, told the permit board in her closing statement on Oct. 15. “These emissions and these violations—they’re not just numbers on a piece of paper. Evidence from Greater Greener Gloster members revealed that what Amite externalizes as non-compliance, the residents of Gloster are internalizing as harm.”
Among the residents alleging harm at the October hearing was Curtis Harris, a high school English teacher who returned to Gloster a decade ago after a long stint in Chicago. Soon after moving back, Harris developed a severe cough and breathing difficulties that affected his activities in the classroom. He has since been diagnosed with COPD and uses a portable oxygen concentrator to assist with breathing.
“We’re fighting for our lives” in Gloster, Harris told the Mississippi Free Press at the hearing on Oct. 14. “When I came from Chicago, I was in good health. And (then) I came down here, and everything changed.”
Like other residents at the hearing, Harris holds the Drax facility responsible for his illness and deteriorating conditions around Gloster. He scoffed at the idea that the plant has benefited the town financially, noting that he instead must pay over $200 a month for breathing medication since his diagnosis.
While Amite BioEnergy has not been the subject of any enforcement actions since September 2024, Greater Greener Gloster members are skeptical that the site’s new safety protocols will shield them from further pollution exposure. Residents have continued to spot wood dust on their properties and smell chemical odors when they venture outdoors, Krystal Martin explained, and she worries signs of pollution will become more common with the new permits in place.
“Compliance does not equal protection,” she told the Mississippi Free Press on Oct. 17. “Drax is about making profit. They are not concerned about the people.”
Continuing the Fight
Greater Greener Gloster members aren’t willing to let the permit board hearing be the last word on Drax’s operations in their town.
A day after the board reversed its April ruling, the law firm Singleton Schreiber announced that over 60 Gloster residents have sued Drax in federal court, alleging that its Amite BioEnergy plant has released dangerous amounts of pollution for nearly a decade in violation of the Clean Air Act.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, seeks injunctive relief and civil penalties against Drax, as well as compensation for residents who say their health and quality of life have suffered since the facility began operating in Gloster. While much of the complaint focuses on known emissions violations and other infractions at the site, attorneys say they will also spotlight plaintiffs’ lived experiences in Gloster and call attention to harms not visible in emissions reports.
“It’s one thing for us to look at and take into account (Drax’s) self-reported data. But it’s another to actually go to Gloster and see the effects in real time,” Shani Butler-Anderson, counsel at Singleton Schreiber, told the Mississippi Free Press on Oct. 16. “And now that Drax has been granted a permit to emit at higher levels and produce at higher levels, we anticipate that that will just have a more severe effect.”
Though Drax was able to convince the permit board that its new pollution controls will help it avoid additional violations in Gloster, the outcome of the residents’ lawsuit does not hinge on the plant’s ability to manage emissions moving forward, Butler-Anderson explained.
“Our lawsuit is not looking at how or what Drax will do in the future,” she said. “We’re looking at the impacts that … the community is already feeling and dealing with, and we want to try to put them in a position where they can be compensated for them.”
Singleton Schreiber expects the court to schedule a case management conference within 45 days of the lawsuit’s filing. During that meeting, the judge will set a timeline for future steps like discovery and a possible trial date.