California biofuel project aims to cut wildfire risk, but at what cost?
LA TimesFor Laura Ornelas and thousands of other South Stockton residents, harmful air pollution is a fact of life. For Ornelas and her neighbors, local air pollution could get even worse if officials approve plans for a massive forest management and biofuel project that would harvest trees across California through wildfire mitigation work, process them into wood pellets at facilities in Lassen and Tuolumne counties and ship them off to Europe and Asia to burn for electricity. Environmental advocates also worry that the forest thinning portion of the project will focus more on biofuel companies’ bottom lines than forest health, doing little to prevent wildfires. “It’s not just the fact that they’re trying to bring these industries in,” Delvo said, “but they’ve come at a cost specifically to the health of South Stockton residents.” In 2015, a San Joaquin County grand jury found that South Stockton — cut off from the north by a cross-town freeway — had been largely neglected by City Hall for years. Delvo and Gloria Estefani Alonso Cruz, Little Manila’s environmental justice advocacy coordinator, view the GSNR project as a betrayal of these promises.
History of this topic
A single, devastating California fire season wiped out years of efforts to cut emissions
LA Times
Ecologists say federal wildfire plans are dangerously out of step with climate change
NPR
Clearing forests: No simple solution to California wildfires
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