The fire on May 29 caused levels of unhealthy fine particulate pollution to become “extremely elevated” in some parts of the surrounding Waterfront South neighborhood, according to Camden County spokesperson Dan Keashen. The city of Camden advised residents to remain indoors for several hours last Friday morning due to the smoke.
EMR’s My Auto Store and public-facing scrap yard on Sixth Street, which purchases material from individuals and contractors, are still operating, Balzano said.
At a community meeting on Monday hosted by the Center for Environmental Transformation, a nonprofit located about 2,000 feet from EMR’s shredder facility, Camden City Council Vice President Arthur Barclay said the city planned to revoke a business license held by the company the following day.
“At [Barclay’s] request, and with the support of the Mayor, the City Administration is undertaking all necessary legal research to move forward in this regard,” city spokesperson Vincent Basara said in an email Tuesday.
Basara could not be reached for comment Friday.
EMR CEO Balzano said the cease operations order does not change EMR’s commitment to the memorandum of understanding the company signed with the city last August, in response to a four-alarm fire in 2025 that forced about 100 residents to evacuate their homes and stay at nearby hotels, where EMR had paid for rooms. In the MOU, the company promised to install a fire suppression system guided by heat sensors, limit the height of its material piles, improve inspections of incoming material for fire risks and donate to nonprofits serving Camden.
“We’ve been here for over a hundred years,” Balzano said. “We value our place in the city of Camden, and want to work for resolution as opposed to in opposition of each other.”
EMR said on May 29 it believed the cause of the fire that morning was a lithium-ion battery.
“It’s important that we as a society, post-consumer society, really start to get some education on lithium batteries and where they come from and how to regulate them into our curbside waste streams, so that we can, kind of, prevent issues like this,” he said Friday. “These things are only proliferating.”