Tristan Baurick, Author at Grist (original) (raw)

Articles by Regional Reporter, Louisiana Tristan Baurick

Tristan Baurick is a reporter for Grist and Verite News, a nonprofit news organization with a mission to produce in-depth journalism in underserved communities in the New Orleans area. Before joining Verite in 2024, Baurick was a coastal and environment reporter at The Times-Picayune | Nola.com. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, ProPublica, and Audubon. Baurick has earned first-place awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and National Association of Science Writers, and was a finalist for the John B. Oakes Award for environmental journalism. He has also won the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Nina Mason Pulliam Award and its top investigative reporting prize.

A bill aimed at increasing the number of wood pellet mills in Louisiana has sailed through the state’s Legislature — despite some lawmakers, including the bill’s sponsor, acknowledging they know little about the controversial industry.

State Representative Chuck Owen, a Republican from Vernon Parish in west Louisiana, said he proposed House Bill 670 in February shortly after learning about the industry, which exports about $1 billion worth of pellets from Louisiana each year. Nearly all the production comes from two British-owned mills in central and north Louisiana that emit large — and sometimes illegal — quantities of air pollutants linked to cancers and other serious illnesses.

Owen, whose district spans one of the state’s most timber-rich regions, said the goal of his bill is to make Louisiana a “premier location for wood pellet manufacturing.”

The legislation gives a state agency, Louisiana Economic Development, broad direction to... Read more