On Monday, Jan. 19 Paul Koberstein, co-author of Canopy of Titans, is giving a talk on the wood pellet industry and its potential impact upon Pacific Northwest forests and communities at Events on Emerson in Hoquiam at 5:30 p.m.

The Winter 2026 issue of Earth Island Journal includes the article, “Up in Smoke: How California pulled the plug on biomass energy,” which Koberstein wrote.

“The release of his article about the pellet plant industry is especially interesting to us, given that the Port (of Grays Harbor) and the city of Hoquiam are trying to cite a wood pellet, industrial wood pellet facility on Moon Island,” said Lee First, with Twin Harbors Waterkeeper.

Twin Harbors Waterkeeper is one of the sponsors of the talk, as are Friends of Grays Harbor, South Sound Sierra Club and the Legacy Forest Defense Coalition.

Recently, the Washington Pollution Control Hearings Board upheld the Olympic Region Clean Air Agency’s air permit to Pacific Northwest Renewal Energy to establish a wood pellet manufacturing facility in Hoquiam.

Twin Harbors Waterkeeper, Friends of Grays Harbor, Grays Harbor Audubon Society and Natural Resources Defense Council filed a petition “for judicial review of the Pollution Control Hearings Board’s Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, and Order dated November 14, 2025.”

Proceedings for the petition start April 17 in Thurston County Superior Court.

By attending the talk, First hopes that attendees will learn more about the wood pellet industry and that they “gain an appreciation of why some of us are fighting to stop logging on the last of our older trees, which we call legacy forests. Legacy forests are forests that are around 100 years old and are structurally diverse.”

(Legacy forests isn’t a term used by forestry professionals. Forests are typically described by their stage of stand development: stand initiation, stem exclusion, understory reinitiation and old growth. Depending upon the age and species composition of the stand, older forests may fall within the stem exclusion or understory reinitiation stand stages.)

Although the filed petition states that “All industrial timberland owners that PNWRE (Pacific Northwest Renewable Energy) will source feedstock from are Sustainable Forest Initiative certified,” according to First, they don’t know that for sure.

“In the American Southeast, the industries there, Drax and others, have said the same thing,” she said. “They’ve said, ‘We’re going to burn slash, we’re going to burn, waste.’ But they’re not. They’re taking down whole forests, and that’s been documented for years.”

This concern wasn’t raised in the filed petition; instead, the petition’s focus was on “(Olympic Region Clean Air Agency) erroneously issue[ing] the Air Permit in violation of Clean Air Act requirements because the agency based its approval on deficient, incorrect, or incomplete emissions calculations and assumptions.”

For those unable to attend Monday’s talk, a second talk is scheduled at Olympia Timberland Library on Jan. 20 at 4:30 p.m.