Camden Council Backs Shutting Down Eastern Metal Recycling After Years of Fires

The activists who came to Camden’s Thursday City Council meeting weren’t sure what to expect.

They knew that after at least a dozen fires in the last five years at the Eastern Metal Recycling plant in the Waterfront South section of the city, Camden officials had finally suspended most operations at the junkyard.

But they didn’t know that Council members had already voted unanimously in an earlier caucus to support a resolution that EMR be shut down by “the Department of Environmental Protection, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Camden County Health Department” and any other agencies with jurisdiction over the facility.

Even as the EMR opponents began to realize that after years of voicing their concerns about the environmental impact of the fires—which necessitated evacuations and which they believe caused serious health problems for residents—that city leaders finally agreed with them, they were angry that it took so long to heed their pleas.

“I just want to say ‘too little, too late’” resident Aliyia Jones told the council. “We’ve been begging to shut this down.” Jones spoke of the trauma and emotional cost of the evacuations, and a promise to supply residents with air purifiers that never materialized.

“We can’t breathe,” she said, and nobody’s paying our hospital bills…you should be ashamed of yourselves.” 

The road to the resolution included a negotiated agreement between Camden Mayor Victor Carstarphen and EMR officials in the aftermath of a massive four-alarm fire in February 2025 that forced an estimated 100 families out of their homes. That memorandum of understanding required EMR to allocate $6.7 million to benefit Waterfront South residents over a five-year period and included a promise to improve the company’s fire suppression system.

The MOU was approved by council only 10 months ago, over objections from residents and activists that they’d received little input into the agreement and that it wasn’t enough to make up for the danger to their health and safety.

This January, then-state Attorney General Matt Platkin and DEP Commissioner Shawn LaTourette filed a lawsuit against the company, citing that for years, EMR fires have filled streets with smoke, polluted the air and presented an “ongoing public nuisance” to the health of families.

Then, on June 1, following a May 29 fire at the plant, Camden Councilman Arthur Barclay met with residents and activists and assured them that EMR’s business license would be revoked the following day. Camden Mayor Victor Carstarphen followed through, saying, “After all of this, after numerous fires, numerous attempts to help EMR prevent future fires, here we are again. This will no longer be tolerated.”

In a letter to the mayor, EMR USA CEO Joe Balzano responded that “being a good neighbor” and operating safely is an “essential priority” for the company and indicated that the company wanted to stay put.

At the meeting, EMR opponents weren’t taking any chances, lining up to remind city leaders of their continuing opposition to the recycler.

Waterfront South resident Lisa Pierce came to the microphone to ask, “Who do I send the bill to for going to the ER for an asthma attack,” brought on, she said, by the fires. “We need to insure that Camden residents are taken care of first, not last.”

Longtime Camden activist Roy Jones referred to a rally earlier that day, in which 100 EMR workers gathered at Camden’s City Hall to protest the calls for the plant’s closure.

“Do they want their family to live a full life or just want a paycheck?” he asked, adding that “the people of Waterfront South have to be made whole.”

For Dwaine Williams, project construction manager at the Camden Redevelopment Agency, the EMR issue is the tip of the iceberg in a part of the city that also houses the Covanta trash incinerator and in a largely Black and Brown city, has long been the epicenter of what has been described as “environmental racism.”

“It was always clear,” said Williams, who said he was not speaking out on behalf of the CRA, “that that neighborhood was an environmental cesspool. I don’t believe the solution is to just shut down EMR…none of these companies respect the neighborhood.” He advocated for a summit meeting “with everyone up there, so we’re not just targeting EMR.”

Waterfront South resident Kristin Schrum, who had led the recent community meeting with Barclay, said “the level of fear in my house has gone down so much” after operations ceased at the plant a few days ago, and said “the license has to be revoked permanently.”

Rosemari Hicks, a Merchantville resident who owns Nuanced Café in Camden, called for environmental justice for the children of the city. “At what point,” she asked, “do you tell these kids enough is enough?”

After Hicks spoke, Council President Angel Fuentes announced that he had to leave the meeting to attend another city event, but assured the EMR opponents that he now felt the same way as they did, and that the resolution was a “consent” item on the agenda, meaning that it had in effect, already been rubber-stamped.

He described his frustration that “no matter how many attempts and how much good faith” had been shown, the recycler had failed to keep residents safe.

“I agree with the last speaker,” Fuentes said. “Enough is enough.”