Most surrounding states are already home to or are targeted for similar operations. The industry has turned itself to the Southeast. In Alabama, pulp and paper mills have already turned once-diverse forests into pine tree plantations. In many other southern states, trees are cut faster than replacements can grow back.
Some experts fear a timber shortage.
Chip mills, pulp mills and chip board factories are moving steadily across the region, through the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia. The citizen group Kentuckians for the Commonwealth drew a map of the region that shows circles for the cutting zones of existing and proposed mills. It shows 10 overlapping circles that stretch from Louisville to eastern West Virginia. We're all going to get hit hard. But in Kentucky, state economic developers refused to provide tax credits to a chip board mill because of environmental concerns.