2 workers injured at Camden’s troubled scrap metal facility

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Two men working at EMR’s scrap metal recycling complex in Camden’s Waterfront South neighborhood were hurt in an industrial accident Saturday night and were transported to Cooper University Hospital.

The incident occurred days after a judge had allowed the facility’s shredder to reopen following weeks of legal wrangling between the city of Camden and the company over fire safety at the plant and the city’s efforts to halt its operations.

One worker sustained life-threatening injuries and was in “critical, but stable condition” Tuesday, said Camden County spokesperson Dan Keashen. The other had minor injuries and was discharged from the hospital, said Cooper University Health Care spokesperson Wendy Marano.

The multinational recycling company’s scrap metal shredding facility has faced opposition from some nearby residents and environmental advocates for years. In May, a two-alarm fire sent smoke into the neighborhood. The blaze was the latest of over a dozen at EMR’s industrial sites in Camden since 2020, and it sparked calls from elected officials for the facility to be shut down permanently.

In June, the city issued a cease operations order to the facility. EMR then sued the city, and the two parties negotiated a settlement agreement, which Camden City Council rejected in a vote early this month.

A New Jersey Superior Court judge then stopped the city from enforcing its cease operations order, allowing EMR to restart its shredder once it had confirmed that an automatic fire suppression system worked.

EMR began restarting work at the site July 13. The company announced plans to be fully operational by July 17 under a new “FireSMART” framework, which includes more employee training, fire breaks between scrap piles, a constant fire watch and audits of scrap metal suppliers’ compliance with EMR’s policies. The company bans material containing flammable lithium-ion batteries, which it blames as the driver of the repeated fires.

But the following evening, emergency responders were dispatched to EMR’s property at 1229 S. Front Street in response to a report of a male with injuries from an accident, Keashen said. City of Camden spokesperson Vincent Basara confirmed that the city’s fire department was called to the location to respond to an incident involving an injury, but declined to provide details about the accident.

Earlier this week, however, operations appeared to continue at the site as trucks delivered scrap metal and cranes lifted and moved scrap in piles near the shredder.

EMR did not respond to a request for comment. Howard Wells, president of Teamsters Local 676, the union that represents roughly 250 EMR workers in Camden, said he was not aware of the incident, but could not rule out the injured workers being Teamsters members.

Years of fires and worker safety issues

Some of the repeated fires at EMR’s Camden facilities have spewed hazardous levels of air pollution into the majority Black and Hispanic Waterfront South neighborhood, driven nearby residents to evacuate their homes, caused residents to experience acute health symptoms and left them with lingering psychological impacts.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined EMR $16,550 earlier this year over a 2023 incident at its Waterfront South complex, in which a worker suffered “severe injuries” after their clothing came into contact with a rough, unguarded, rotating piece of equipment, which “rotated the worker several times.”

In January, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and Office of the Attorney General sued EMR, accusing the company of failing to take “appropriate steps” to fix unsafe conditions at its facilities.

That lawsuit is still pending. In a letter July 20, the state and EMR jointly asked the judge to delay next steps in the case to give them more time to “discuss potential resolution of this matter.”