MALVERN, Arkansas — Anthony Timberlands is pausing operations at its pine lumber sawmill facility in Malvern. ATI President Steve Anthony shared the following release and internal memo to inform the community of its actions in response to the community uproar caused by a discharge of pollutants from the Malvern facility into a nearby waterway. …Effective January 7, the Anthony Timberlands sawmill in Malvern will pause operations for one month. Additionally, lumber inventory levels will be drawn down at the facility’s planer mill at which point it will pause operations. Recent actions by downstream landowners, facility neighbors, and local government officials have led ATI to determine that operating at this time is not in our best interest. Once the facility’s Remediation and Maintenance Plan is in place over the next month, ATI will evaluate its options going forward.
MISSISSIPPI — Chemical plants and paper mills are among the top polluters in Mississippi, which has seen a decrease in the total amount of toxic releases reported to the Environmental Protection Agency over the last five years. Certain industries are required by federal law to report every year to the EPA their toxic releases, which include air and water emissions as well as land disposals. Over the last five years, the facilities with the most toxic releases in Mississippi were: Tronox, LLC – 72.6 million pounds of releases… Chemours DeLisle – 72.3 million pounds… Georgia Pacific Leaf River – 15.7 million pounds… Choctaw Generation… Tyson Farms, Carthage – 9.5 million pounds. … Overall, toxic releases reported to the EPA show a 17% decrease in the state from 2017 through 2021, the latest year of available data. The most abundant chemicals in those releases were manganese, nitrate, vanadium, ammonia and chromium.
The chief goal of the Southern Group of State Foresters (SGSF) is to ensure the health and sustainability of the South’s nearly 250 million acres of forestland. Rapid population growth and resulting urbanization, however, is putting 23 million acres of southern forestland at risk of loss. This statistic, though, does not need to be a death sentence for southern forests. Research has shown the presence of markets for forest products helps landowners manage their forests, adds value to their forests and helps maintain forest profitability so that landowners can keep their forests as forests. In the South, private landowners own 86 percent of southern forestland. Two-thirds of these landowners are families and individuals. SGSF continues to promote traditional and emerging markets for forests products. …Recent legislation in support of forests includes… the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act which combined are an unprecedented investment in our nation’s forests. 
BETHESDA, Md.–Enviva Inc., the world’s leading producer of sustainably sourced woody biomass, today issued the following statement regarding the 
…Soaring energy costs have made wood heat an attractive proposition. The cost of heating with wood can be cheaper and less volatile, but wood heat experts say it can be an uphill battle to convince people to switch to a less mainstream fuel. Rebates and tax credits are available that can make the equation more favorable. “We have so much of this as a resource, but for some reason it hasn’t caught on the way solar has caught on or energy efficiency,” said Andy Duncan, who runs the New Hampshire Rural Renewables program. …Duncan and those in the forestry industry have argued there are environmental benefits to using wood heat, like promoting sustainable forest management. It creates a market for low-grade wood and an incentive for taking that wood out of the forest to make space for healthy trees to grow in its place.
Mississippi is becoming one of the premier sources of sustainable and renewable wood pellets in the world. Major international wood pellet producing companies are investing billions in the Magnolia State, taking advantage of the state’s tremendous supply of wood and forest products and the state’s unique access to water transportation. Almost 20 million acres, about 65% of Mississippi’s landmass, is covered with pine and hardwood timber. …The 234-mile Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway runs from the northeast corner of the state, through the industry-rich “Golden Triangle,” to Mobile’s deep-water port and into the Gulf of Mexico. …The emergence of Mississippi as a major wood pellet producer creates a new source of income for tree farmers in an environmentally sensitive and sustainable manner./cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/R2T2ELYF2BAQNCZTP3IPWWO2TU.JPG)
