The hidden toll of wood pellet power

After the world’s largest producer of wood pellets built what it called a state-of-the-art biomass facility near Ruby Bell’s home in Faison, North Carolina, she started organizing. Bell told her residents about the potential impacts, and tried to prevent the company from adding to the area’s environmental burden. It has been an uphill climb. The retired educator recalls the day that the reality of the effects set in. She had spent the afternoon talking to residents about their experiences living near the new wood pellet facility. By the time she got home, Bell says she was sniffling, her nose was running, and her eyes were burning. “I thought ‘what in the world is going on?’ Then it dawned on me: I sat outside for 20 minutes talking to a resident. There was all this dust and my pants were covered from sitting in a chair,” she recalls. “If it’s like this after 20 minutes, I can only imagine what it’s like for those people living there.” Seeing experiences like Bell’s — ordinary residents pushed into the role of frontline advocates — helped draw Sherri White-Williamson deeper into environmental justice work, changing the course of her life. After decades working for federal agencies in Washington, D.C., White-Williamson wanted to return to North Carolina and confront industrial pollution. Believing she could make a bigger impact as a lawyer, she enrolled at Vermont Law School at the age of 63. After graduating, White-Williamson founded the Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN), a grassroots organization dedicated to empowering rural communities to defend their environment and health. Sherri White-Williamson at the EJCAN office in Sampson County, NC. Mallory Cash She says EJCAN’s role is to educate community members so that they can advocate for themselves. “This work is much more effective when it’s done by somebody who’s actually directly affected,” she says. The group initially focused on ground water contamination and air quality issues