Officials call for Camden recycling facility’s closure after 13th fire in 6 years
The Friday fire at the EMR recycling facility happened just days after a new fire-suppression system was installed.
Camden officials are calling for the EMR recycling facility to be shut down after flames consumed the junkyard for the 13th time in six years. The Friday morning fire broke out days after a new suppression system was installed.
“Enough is enough,” said Camden Mayor Victor Carstarphen. “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.”
Smoke at the Waterfront South scrap metal recycling facility alerted authorities to the blaze shortly before 3 a.m., according to Fire Department Chief Jesse Flax, and it was placed under control more than two hours later.
“It took a little while because it was a deep-seated fire. There was a lot of debris,” Flax said.
The facility has seen 13 fires since 2020, city officials said at a Friday news conference.
EMR had agreed to take steps to prevent blazes, having recently installed new suppression units, Flax said.
“They had a malfunction with one of them; the other ones kept on and they actually suppressed anything that was in the general area,” Flax said. “What did activate did help.”
According to the chief, this allowed firefighters to extinguish the blaze a little faster, without needing to call for backup from nearby departments.
That was a far different scenario from the February 2025 fire at the junkyard that forced almost 100 people to evacuate their homes. New Jersey officials have filed a lawsuit against EMR over the blaze and its impacts.
Friday’s fire still prompted air quality alerts and crews encountered some difficulties controlling the flames.
“EMR has stepped up with the suppression equipment that they put out there. Unfortunately, this didn’t work as I assume they would have wanted it to work, but at some point our residents are what we always put first and foremost,” Carstarphen said.
EMR announced Friday it would be halting its operations at the Waterfront South site and having a third-party firm conduct a review of the facility.
“We have already ceased receiving recyclable materials at the shredder and are pausing shredder operations pending the outcome of this review,” a statement from the facility read. “We are Camden neighbors. We take this seriously.”
But Carstarphen said the pause was not enough.
He urged governmental regulatory agencies with jurisdiction over EMR facilities to shut down the Waterfront South facility.
“It’s quality of life,” Carstarphen said.
Shutting down the facility would mean reviewing the agreement Carstarphen’s administration made with EMR following the 2025 fire.
In the $6.7 million deal, EMR agreed to allocate $450,000 annually until 2030, on top of $4.5 million in 2025, for the Waterfront South community. As part of that agreement, funds were also assigned for enhancing EMR’s fire suppression system and reimbursing the Camden fire department for the damages caused by the blaze.
“We have been open enough. We worked in good faith with the scenario that led up [to] the resources they put in there. It hasn’t worked,” Carstarphen said.
Camden County Commissioner Jeffrey Nash emphasized that the city’s residents should not have to continuously deal with the threat of fire.
“The residents of this community should never ever have to worry about their children going to school. The workers … should not have to worry about smoke or poison coming into their workplace,“ Nash said. ”It’s unacceptable. Enough is enough.”
Staff writer Frank Kummer contributed to this article.
