Camden metal recycler whose fire caused evacuations had a history of violations

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The metal recycling company whose South Camden scrapyard went up in flames Friday, forcing around 100 residents to evacuate, had a history of violations in the city, according to records from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

Friday’s fire was just the latest associated with EMR’s scrap metal recycling operations in Camden.

“It’s been a serious ongoing problem,” said Kevin Barfield, director of Camden for Clean Air and the former president of the Camden County NAACP.

EMR said Sunday that the cause of the fire was a lithium-ion battery that was improperly sent to its scrap recycling facility.

“We are angered that this happened and deeply regret any inconvenience to our neighbors,” the company said in a statement reported by NJ.com.

The New Jersey Fire Marshal is still investigating the cause of the fire, a spokesperson said.

A history of environmental violations

EMR runs a metal recycling complex along the Delaware River waterfront in South Camden, where the fire took place, as well as a salvaged auto parts store and a scrapyard that buys cars and appliances along I-676 in the city.

State environmental officials have cited EMR’s Waterfront South sites for several violations in recent years, according to New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection enforcement records.

These violations included emitting smoke and air pollutants that could have posed a “potential threat” to public health, operating front-end loaders, claw grabbers and industrial magnets without permits, allowing trucks to idle and otherwise failing to operate equipment in line with permits.

In 2021, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection charged EMR a penalty of $9,500 for two fires that occurred in 2020 and 2021 at the company’s Kaighn Avenue facility, where it stores large piles of auto-shredding waste known as “fluff.” The agency later settled the matter with EMR, accepting a lower penalty of $7,600.

“You don’t necessarily want to live right next to [EMR], the same way you wouldn’t want to live next to a landfill,” said Benjamin Saracco, a volunteer with Camden for Clean Air who lives several miles away from the facility in Camden’s Cooper Grant neighborhood.

Saracco said even at his home in North Camden, depending on the wind direction, it’s sometimes possible to smell a “sweet burning plastic odor” coming from the facility. The nearest homes to EMR’s Waterfront South facilities are much closer — just thousands of feet away.

Camden, a predominantly Black and Latino, working-class city, is considered an overburdened community by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. It is also home to a trash incinerator that has been a target of advocates working for clean air.

Numerous fires at EMR in recent years

Camden County Commissioner Director Louis Cappelli, Jr. told CBS News that Friday’s fire was EMR’s sixth at the facility since 2021.

“This is by far the worst fire that has occurred on this site, and we want to make sure it is the last,” he said in a statement.

During EMR’s fluff pile fire in 2021, students at the nearby Sacred Heart School were sent home and several firefighters had to receive medical treatment for smoke inhalation. The Camden County Health Department Hazmat division fined EMR close to $90,000.

In 2022, two more fires broke out at EMR facilities in Camden. That year, OSHA proposed a fine of over $1 million for the company’s My Auto Store, claiming the company “willfully failed” to prevent fires. My Auto Store said at the time it planned to “vigorously contest” the penalty and “present our side of the story during the appeals process.”

EMR and its regulating governmental agencies need to do more to prevent pollution from the facility from impacting neighbors, said Barfield, whose group has been pushing for more community-controlled air monitoring nearby and pollution controls.

“This is not something that just came up — we’ve been on the radar for this for years,” Barfield said. “We have to stand and ask them to do better.”

EMR did not respond to questions about past environmental violations or air pollution caused by Friday’s fire.

‘Apocalyptic’ smoke raised air pollution levels briefly Friday

Saracco, who works at a local hospital, watched Friday’s blaze from roughly 100 yards away. He described smelling a burning “chemical”-like odor, feeling “intense heat” and hearing explosions.

“It was apocalyptic looking,” he said.

For three hours Friday evening, an air quality monitor at the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority building near the site of the fire picked up “unhealthy” levels of fine particulate matter, which can travel deep into lungs and even get into the bloodstream, exacerbating lung and heart conditions.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency helped state environmental officials set up four community air monitors to measure particulates and did not find results above action levels, said spokesperson Nikita Joshi.

Strong winds Friday sent smoke from the EMR fire into Haddonfield, Ashland, Somerdale and Voorhees, 6abc reported. Across the Delaware River, emergency management officials alerted Philadelphians to “take precautions to avoid unnecessary exposure to smoke.”

Philadelphia’s Air Management Services monitored air quality along the river in South Philadelphia and determined there was “no threat to human health to Philadelphians” as a result of the fire, said spokesperson James Garrow.