When Helen Reed first learned about the bioenergy mill opening in her hometown of Gloster, Mississippi, the word was it would bring jobs and economic opportunities. It was only later that she learned that activity came with a cost: the Amite Bioenergy mill, opened in 2014 by British energy giant Drax, emits large – and sometimes illegal – quantities of air pollutants, including methanol, acrolein and formaldehyde, which are linked to cancers and other serious illnesses.
“When I go out, I can’t hardly catch my breath,” Reed said. “Everything is worse since Drax came here.”
The facility churns out billions of wood pellets each year to meet surging overseas demand for “sustainable biomass”, a renewable alternative to coal.
The Amite BioEnergy wood pellet production facility in Gloster. Photograph: Kathleen Flynn/For the Guardian
Now, Gloster residents are suing Drax, alleging that the company unlawfully exposed people to “massive amounts of toxic pollutants”, according to the October filing.
Drax, one of the world’s biggest players in the booming biomass industry, has turned the UK’s largest coal power station, a mile-wide complex in rural Yorkshire, into what is essentially an immense wood stove fueled with Mississippi and Louisiana pine. The company, whose Yorkshire plant is among the UK’s largest single carbon emitters, has faced scrutiny and lawsuits in the UK for pollution and workplace safety violations.
Its operations in the US are also beginning to draw legal challenges. “This case is about holding a multi-billion-dollar foreign corporation accountable for poisoning a small Mississippi community,” said Letitia Johnson, an attorney representing the group, in a statement.
When the Gloster plant opened, many in the low-income, majority-Black town of 850 people were optimistic that it would revitalize the local economy. But some residents say it has brought little more than noise, dust and toxic air.
Michelli Martin, a Drax spokesperson, said the company is making strides to reduce pollution.
“The safety of our people and the communities in which we operate is our priority, and we take our environmental responsibilities very seriously,” Martin said. “As a company dedicated to sustainable energy production, high standards of safety and environmental compliance are always our top priority.”
Drax’s Gloster plant is one of 30 large pellet mills – including five belonging to Drax – in the US south. Inside these plants, stacks of logs are stripped of bark, shredded, cooked in 1,000-degree tumble dryers, pulverized in hammermills, and pressed into pellets destined mostly for export.
Photograph: Kathleen Flynn/The Guardian
Pellet exports from the US have quintupled, growing from 2 million tons in 2012 to about 10.5 million tons in 2023, according to the US Industrial Pellet Association. Most pellets are sent to the UK and Europe, where they are classified as a renewable energy source on par with solar and wind, making wood-burning eligible for massive subsidies, low-interest loans and other government incentives.
But researchers say the drying, crushing and cooling processes at the mills emit air pollution that could be contributing to nearby residents’ health problems.
“Air pollution is magnitudes higher in Gloster, especially with VOCs [volatile organic compounds],” said Erica Walker, a Brown University epidemiologist. She and a team of researchers set up air pollution monitors in the town and found clouds of VOCs concentrated around the mill and neighboring residential areas.
“Literally, my first question when I visited Gloster was: ‘Who zoned this?’” she said of the mill, which abuts a mobile home park and is less than a mile from a children’s day care center. “It’s right out in the open. No acoustical barriers, no buffer of trees. It was shocking to see it operating right in the middle of the community.”
Photograph: Kathleen Flynn/For the Guardian
Gloster mayor Jerry Norwood said small, remote mill towns like his can’t thrive without plants like Drax’s. “All of these small towns, we have nothing,” he said. “If big business don’t commit the big dollars, we don’t have the tax base. We have to have that for community growth.”
Norwood did not respond to emailed questions about pollution or residents’ lawsuits against Drax, but in an October op-ed published before the suit was filed he wrote: “Those who oppose Drax and some in the media have made our town out to be some sort of smog-filled nightmare, but that is simply false. Along with my friends and neighbors who live, work and play in Gloster, I can assure you we breathe clean air.”
Gloster residents, once hopeful that the mill would reverse the town’s decline – it has lost more than 20% of its population since 2000 – say it is only hastening it. Many say their experience should come as a warning to other communities.
Longtime resident Carmella Wren-Causey, a plaintiff in the lawsuit against Drax, said she started using an oxygen tank in 2020 after developing breathing problems she blames on the mill. “We’re being poisoned slowly, right before our eyes,” she said through tears.
“God gave me breath when he gave me life,” she said. “Drax took it away.”
Carmella Wren-Causey in her car. Photograph: Kathleen Flynn/The Guardian
A history of violations
Drax, one of the world’s largest pellet companies, has racked up nearly $6m in violations for its operations in Mississippi and Louisiana over the past four years.
In 2020, the Mississippi department of environmental quality, following years of prodding from environmental groups, found the company’s Gloster mill was emitting an average of 796 tons of VOCs per year – more than three times the limit allowed under the mill’s permit – and fined the company $2.5m.
Louisiana officials, too, found that Drax had been breaking several of its air quality rules, and in 2022 reached a settlement in which Drax paid $3.2m but admitted no wrongdoing.
The Drax power station in North Yorkshire. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer
The settlement was the largest in more than a decade for Louisiana environmental officials, but it appears to be the extent of any serious efforts to rein in Drax’s pollution in Louisiana, said Patrick Anderson, an attorney who, when working with the Environmental Integrity Project, reviewed Drax’s pollution history in Mississippi and Louisiana.
The Louisiana department of environmental quality did not respond to requests for comment.
Matt White, vice-president of Drax’s North American operations, said that Drax has since made several upgrades and changes to reduce emissions, including installing a thermal oxidizer at the Gloster mill that they say essentially burns away VOCs.
“We take our environmental responsibilities and compliance extremely seriously,” White said. “Compliance is at the foundation of everything we do, and we have invested a lot of hours and resources with the goal of continuously improving our operations.”
People support a Drax protester who was detained by UK police in 2024. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer
Despite the upgrades and repeated promises to do better, Drax continued to incur fines for pollution violations. In late 2024, Drax agreed to pay $225,000 for exceeding the Gloster mill’s limits for hazardous air pollutants, particularly for methanol, which were recorded at nearly double the permitted threshold, according to the MDEQ.
In April 2025, amid complaints from residents, the MDEQ denied Drax permission to increase its emissions. Its reversal of that decision in October – allowing Drax’s Gloster mill to become a “major source” of hazardous air pollutants – triggered the lawsuit against the company.
A representative from the MDEQ declined to comment on the lawsuit, but said: “MDEQ takes seriously its obligations to protect human health and the environment.”
The $6m in penalties over the past four years are a drop in the bucket for Drax, Anderson said. The company raked in $1.4bn in profits in 2024 and about 1.3bn in 2023, according to Drax’s adjusted earnings reports.
“Drax is so profitable and so subsidized that it powers through all of this,” Anderson said. “The fines don’t hurt their bottom line.”
Researchers have found several signs that these pollutants are having real consequences.
The air monitors that Walker and her team installed detected unexpected spikes in VOCs during the night, something that lines up with residents’ complaints of foul odors and difficulty breathing after dark.
“At night, it’s always worse,” Gloster resident Robert Weatherspoon said. “It smells disgusting.”
Robert Weatherspoon once jogged daily but now struggles to breathe. Photograph: Kathleen Flynn/The Guardian
This could indicate pollution “dumping” during certain hours, Walker said.
Drax disputed the dumping claim. “Any suggestion that we manipulate our operations to avoid complaints or detection is completely false,” Martin said.
Walker’s team also found that the closer children lived to the mill, the heavier they were. “It fits with some of the things we heard at community meetings,” Walker said. “You don’t want your kids playing outside because the air’s polluted. If they’re staying inside, how are they getting physical activity?”
It’s not just the hazardous chemicals that are keeping residents up at night.
Glen Henderson, a resident of Urania, Louisiana, whose Drax mill opened in 2017, described near-constant clanging and banging from the mill. Lights glow over the tops of an ever-thinning band of trees between his home and the mill, nearly a mile away, and at daybreak, a powdery substance often coats his truck.
“This noise and dust – what are the long-term effects of all that?” he asked.
In 2024, Walker and a team of researchers from the University of Mississippi and Drexel University published a study based on a noise exposure assessment in Gloster.
Children walk home after being dropped off by their school bus in Gloster. Photograph: Kathleen Flynn/For the Guardian
They found the mill’s operations and truck traffic sometimes topped 70 decibels, whereas the comparably sized Mississippi town of Mendenhall, which does not have a pellet mill, was typically 10 decibels quieter.
“That’s an enormous difference,” Walker said. “It’s like turning a faucet into Niagara Falls.”
Martin said Drax follows federal noise abatement guidelines and insulates buildings to mitigate sound levels.
“Pellet mills generate noise as part of the manufacturing process from the operation of equipment,” Martin said. “The noise from facility operation is consistent with the surrounding industrial plants and does not contribute to significant impacts above existing background noise.”
A growing body of research has linked chronic noise exposure to high blood pressure, heart attacks, anxiety and depression.
“Noise disrupts your sleep, disrupts your mood, and sets off a stress response that’s like your ‘fight or flight’ response, which makes your body ready to fight a threat or run from it,” Walker said. “The constant stimulation of that response can cause all kinds of health problems.”
Community leader Krystal Martin shows a photo of the Gloster facility. Photograph: Kathleen Flynn/The Guardian
The company recently expanded a mill in Alabama, established a North American headquarters in Monroe, Louisiana and opened an office in Houston to lead its carbon capture and sequestration enterprises.
Over the past six years, the Urania mill alone has produced enough pellets to fill the New Orleans Superdome nearly twice.
Yet several residents in Gloster and Urania said that output has not revitalized their economies. Each of the three large Drax mills in Louisiana and Mississippi employs between 70 and 80 people, a fraction of the workforce supported by many past mills. In Gloster, only 15% of Drax’s employees reside in the community, according to the company.
Photograph: Kathleen Flynn/For the Guardian
Mabel Williams, a lifelong resident of Gloster, never wanted a Drax job, but she had high hopes that the mill would employ enough people to breathe life back into downtown. Walking along a largely vacant Main Street, her memories crowded every empty lot and darkened window.
“There were people everywhere,” said Williams, 87, who spent decades cleaning the homes of the white residents who have mostly moved away. “This was a clothing store and that was a jewelry store owned by a German man. And over there, my mamma worked at the cafe.” Across the train tracks was the Black business district, with four barbershops, restaurants and music venues, she said. “I get excited when I think about what Gloster had,” she said.
Williams still has faith that Gloster is capable of a revival, but she no longer believes it will be thanks to Drax.
“Drax is making so much money,” she said. “They’ve got to spend that money some kind of way, but they’re not spending it here.”
A longer version of this story is forthcoming from Verite News
