Tag Archives: Krystal Martin

Mongabay: Drax pellet mill wins appeal to raise pollution limits in small Mississippi town

Krystal Martin, right, co-founder of Greater Greener Gloster, attended the October Mississippi DEQ hearing with many of her neighbors, who say they were disappointed with the outcome. She stands beside Kadin Love, a social justice organizer with the Dogwood Alliance, an environmental nonprofit. Image courtesy of Krystal Martin.

What Mississippi gives to a poor, Black community in the state it can just as quickly take away. That’s what this story details. In May, I reported that a permitting committee of the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality voted to deny wood-pellet maker Drax its request for a new classification to enable it to exceed air pollution standards.

In October, after a Drax appeal, the same committee sided with the company and against the small community — which has been telling anyone who will listen that the air pollution from one of the largest wood-pellet mills in the country is damaging their health and quality of life.

As my story explains: Pellet mills have increasingly come under fire from rural communities who accuse large-scale manufacturers like the U.K.’s Drax and Enviva in the U.S. of air pollution, dust and noise violations. A 2023 study found that pellet mills in the U.S. Southeast release 55 hazardous pollutants.

Moreover, the Drax plant has been fined more than $2.75 million since 2016 for exceeding toxic emissions limits. While Drax says it has invested millions in pollution mitigation technology to prevent future pollution, those living in Gloster told me they’ve seen no difference in their air quality.

Mongabay: Wood pellet maker Drax denied pollution permit after small town Mississippi outcry

Krystal Martin (center) has for months lobbied local and state officials about what she and her neighbors believe are health hazards posed by pollution from one of the largest wood-pellet mills in the world, owned by Drax and located near the center of Gloster, Mississippi. She organized neighbors on April 8 to fill a hearing room in the capital of Jackson to argue against a permit for Drax to legally emit more toxic pollution during its manufacturing process. Image courtesy of Krystal Martin.

It is a rare thing when a small, poor Black community stands up successfully to a corporate giant like Drax, one of the world’s largest makers of wood pellets for industrial-scale burning for energy. But that’s what happened in Mississippi in April 2025, as this story of mine illustrates.

I learned about this meeting in Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, while I was in Washington in late March to speaks at a forum on wood pellets for energy sponsored by the Rachel Carson Council. Krystal Martin discussed the organizing efforts her group, in conjunction with several environmental groups, were pursuing to keep Drax from increasing the amount of toxic emissions it was already putting into the air over Gloster, Miss., where Drax has its largest facility. The community argument prevailed over the business argument put forth by Drax. That just doesn’t happen very often, especially in environmental justice communities like Gloster.

This is one of those examples where a public health and quality of life argument from a local community may just have more impact in pushing back against the growth of the wood pellet industry than the years of scientific arguments that have largely failed to persuade policymakers in the European Union and United Kingdom to shift away from their reliance of forest biomass for energy as the primary way to phase out coal.