City of Camden issues cease operations order to EMR after two-alarm fire

This story is part of the WHYY News Climate Desk, bringing you news and solutions for our changing region.

From the Poconos to the Jersey Shore to the mouth of the Delaware Bay, what do you want to know about climate change? What would you like us to cover? Get in touch.

The city of Camden issued a cease operations order Thursday to EMR, the scrap metal recycling company that runs a shredding facility along the Delaware River waterfront where a two-alarm fire occurred on May 29.

The order covers the company’s scrap metal shredder and material separator, where the company receives, shreds and processes junk cars, construction debris, old appliances and other scrap so it can be remelted, EMR USA CEO Joe Balzano said Friday. The company had already voluntarily paused receiving and shredding material at the site where the fire on May 29 occurred.

“We’re looking for a cooperative solution with the city,” Balzano said Friday. “We’re hoping we can sit down and then have a conversation, and see if we can resolve it.”

The cease operations order cited “public nuisance conditions” at EMR’s location at Front Street and Atlantic Avenue, according to a photo posted on social media by the group Camden for Clean Air.

City, county and state elected officials called on EMR to fully cease operations in Camden following last Friday’s blaze, which was the latest in over a dozen fires that have occurred at sites operated by EMR in the city since 2020, according to a lawsuit filed by the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General earlier this year. The officials called on the Environmental Protection Agency, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and “every other regulatory agency” to shut down EMR’s operations at its scrapyard in the Waterfront South neighborhood.

“We will not stand idly by while residents are exposed to fires on a regular basis and have to bear the burdens of an operation that clearly cannot function in a safe manner,” the joint statement from Camden County Commissioner Jeffrey Nash, Camden Mayor Victor Carstarphen, Camden City Council President Angel Fuentes, Camden City Council Vice President Arthur Barclay and state Sen. Nilsa Cruz-Perez read.

Some nearby residents had called for EMR to shut down after previous fires left them with concerns about the health impacts of the smoke.

The fire on May 29 caused levels of unhealthy fine particulate pollution to become “extremely elevated” in some parts of the surrounding Waterfront South neighborhood, according to Camden County spokesperson Dan Keashen. The city of Camden advised residents to remain indoors for several hours last Friday morning due to the smoke.

EMR’s My Auto Store and public-facing scrap yard on Sixth Street, which purchases material from individuals and contractors, are still operating, Balzano said.

At a community meeting on Monday hosted by the Center for Environmental Transformation, a nonprofit located about 2,000 feet from EMR’s shredder facility, Camden City Council Vice President Arthur Barclay said the city planned to revoke a business license held by the company the following day.

“At [Barclay’s] request, and with the support of the Mayor, the City Administration is undertaking all necessary legal research to move forward in this regard,” city spokesperson Vincent Basara said in an email Tuesday.

Basara could not be reached for comment Friday.

EMR CEO Balzano said the cease operations order does not change EMR’s commitment to the memorandum of understanding the company signed with the city last August, in response to a four-alarm fire in 2025 that forced about 100 residents to evacuate their homes and stay at nearby hotels, where EMR had paid for rooms. In the MOU, the company promised to install a fire suppression system guided by heat sensors, limit the height of its material piles, improve inspections of incoming material for fire risks and donate to nonprofits serving Camden.

“We’ve been here for over a hundred years,” Balzano said. “We value our place in the city of Camden, and want to work for resolution as opposed to in opposition of each other.”

EMR said on May 29 it believed the cause of the fire that morning was a lithium-ion battery.

“It’s important that we as a society, post-consumer society, really start to get some education on lithium batteries and where they come from and how to regulate them into our curbside waste streams, so that we can, kind of, prevent issues like this,” he said Friday. “These things are only proliferating.”