Bill targeting scrapyard pollution stalls in New Jersey Legislature

Measure aimed at protecting urban neighborhoods has failed to advance in the Senate

Reform legislation that promises to protect some of New Jersey’s poorest residents from the environmental hazards created by rogue scrap metal recyclers has stalled in Trenton and is feared dead.

The measure, known officially as Assembly Bill 2406, would give the state powerful new tools to control recycling companies that have long been exempt from clean air laws and other anti-pollution statutes that govern the state’s solid waste industry.

The legislation came after a series of scrapyard fires over the past half-decade inundated urban neighborhoods in Camden and Bayonne with toxic smoke, dust, and ash. All those fires, including several that ignited on seagoing scrap barges, broke out in waste handled by EMR Metal Recycling of Camden, a politically prominent firm with ties to South Jersey’s Democratic machine.

Two key sources who have followed the legislation told The Jersey Vindicator that it has been unable to advance to the state Senate, where no lawmaker has even been willing to even introduce the measure so far.

“It’s pretty clear that some pretty powerful forces are against this bill as it’s written,” one source told The Jersey Vindicator. “That’s because it has some pretty strong teeth that would finally bring some real regulation to scrap processors.”

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The bill’s prime sponsor, Assemblyman William Moen Jr., a Democrat who represents voters in Camden and Gloucester counties, declined to be interviewed for this story. In a statement released by the Assembly Democratic office, Moen said he was still working to move the measure, but he did not address questions about the political headwinds against it.

“Since the legislation’s introduction, a range of stakeholders have reached out to my office to offer feedback and request amendments,” Moen said. “My team and I continue to review these requests and meet with stakeholders to move the bill forward. It is imperative to hold scrap metal facilities accountable in New Jersey, and I remain committed to passing A2406 into law.”

Last month, a companion bill, also sponsored by Moen, passed quickly through committee and was endorsed by the entire Assembly in a 55-17 vote.

That bill, A2401, would require scrap metal businesses to install fire suppression and dust control equipment, and to restrict the height of scrap piles to 55 feet. Supporters of the legislation called it a limited first step, pointing out that it would still leave scrap operators largely free from oversight and allow businesses a leisurely five years to install the new protections.

EMR in Camden is the American arm of a U.K. firm that is among the largest processors of scrap metal in the world. Formerly known as Camden Iron & Metal, the Jersey-based company is controlled by the Balzanos, a prominent South Jersey family that has long been active in Camden County civic and political affairs.

A family patriarch, Joseph A. Balzano, was the longtime director of the South Jersey Port Corporation, a quasi-public economic development agency that manages marine terminals in Camden and Paulsboro. Under the direction of family scion Joseph W. Balzano, the Camden scrap company has been a major contributor to the county’s Democratic organization.

State campaign finance records show nearly $70,000 in political contributions in the name of Joseph W. Balzano or his scrap firm over the past two decades, given mostly to Camden County and South Jersey candidates and political funds. More than $29,000 of those donations were made to Democratic U.S. Rep. Donald Norcross, who represents Camden and suburban South Jersey voters.

Balzano has given substantial amounts in recent years to state Sen. Nilsa Cruz-Perez, another Camden-area Democrat, as well as Camden city officials who sit on a special committee set up last year to oversee the scrap recycler. EMR approved the committee’s formation as part of an agreement to create a $6.7 million fund to install protections around its waterfront scrapyards in the city.

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Residents in Camden’s Waterfront South neighborhood on the Delaware River were forced to evacuate their homes last year after a multi-alarm fire that started in EMR’s scrap pile generated toxic smoke. People complained of asthma attacks and other respiratory ailments and said the relentless noise and dust blowing off EMR’s four-story mountain of scrap continues to shatter their lives.

Data from the New Jersey Department of Health show that Camden residents are admitted to the hospital for asthma more than people in any other county. Data for 2024 show hospitalization rates are double and triple the rates in most other counties.

Benjamin Saracco, a Rowan University professor who has worked for years to protect the Camden waterfront, says residents there are assaulted by industrial polluters on a daily basis. The residents, he said, have learned first-hand that poorer, minority neighborhoods like theirs have been sacrificed to deep-pocketed businesses that influence environmental policy.

“Within a few square miles you’ve got scrapyards, a garbage incinerator, power plants, cement plants – just name it,” Saracco said in an interview Tuesday. “Stuff that is tolerated here would never be allowed in the wealthy suburbs just a few miles away. It’s not right, yet it keeps going on.”

Residents in affected areas of Camden, he said, have little faith that the recent agreement between EMR and the city will bring meaningful change. They are similarly dismissive of New Jersey’s much trumpeted “environmental justice” law, the 2020 reform that was supposed to bring new protections to poor, “overburdened” urban areas that have historically hosted an outsized share of polluting industries.

Critics of the law point out that it exempts a broad range of businesses, including scrap yards. They say the law is so weak that it has yet to prevent a single project.

“The irony is the state already has plenty of power to come in and prevent these neighborhoods from being taken advantage of,” said former New Jersey Sierra Club President Jeff Tittel. “But the state won’t exercise that power because the legislature is bought and sold by interests like the scrap metal industry. Finally, we get a good bill to regulate scrap yards, and it just fades away.”

The legislation would give the Department of Environmental Protection the authority to enter, inspect, and regulate scrap sites the same way it now controls garbage dumps and other solid waste facilities. Currently, scrappers aren’t even required to register with the state or obtain a general operating permit.

Advocates like Tittel point out that New Jersey remains far behind other states in regulating metal recyclers. States like California require scrappers to operate inside warehouses or other closed structures to prevent the spread of harmful dust.

In 2023, residents of Bayonne living along the Kill Van Kull of Newark Bay were stunned when trucks and trainloads of scrap started arriving in their neighborhood. Within weeks, they say, a 60-foot mountain of shredded cars and heavy appliances rose over the neighborhood less than a quarter-mile from their homes.

Soon, clouds of dust and metal particles blowing off the scrap heap blanketed their neighborhood. The clang of bulldozers and cranes dropping scrap metal into barges on the Kill kept them awake at night. A series of multi-alarm fires that broke out in the scrapyard were so big that New York City fireboats had to be called in to get them under control.

“We never even got a letter or anything saying they were coming to town,” said Joe Heaney, a retired police officer who lives a block away from the Bayonne scrap heap. “How is that even possible?”

In January, the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office filed suit against EMR, seeking to force reforms that would prevent fires and offer greater protections to neighbors. The suit was expanded last month to include more recent fires at EMR, including one on a Delaware River barge that covered part of the Philadelphia waterfront with smoke.

EMR did not respond to a request for comment. After the suit was filed in January, the company cited its agreement with Camden as evidence that it is committed to reform. The company also called for tighter regulation of discarded lithium-ion batteries, which have been implicated in waste fires.

“The safety of our employees and the Camden community residents is our number one priority,” said EMR Chairman Balzano in a release to media outlets at the time.