The fear of scrap fires plagues residents living within hundreds of feet of the facility.
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Massachusetts does not recycle metal.
Excel Recycling, LLC knocked on doors and gave its “good neighbor” spiel to Freetown five years ago. Since, Excel has, by the grace of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, collected, bought, sold, processed, sorted, transported and exported recyclable scrap metal with no recycling permit.
Excel’s Freetown facility houses one of the state’s few mega auto-shredders and the only one sited in a residential area, albeit on industrial zoned property. In it a hammermill pulverizes automobiles and bulk scrap into fist-sized pieces before sending them downstream to be sorted into ferrous, non-ferrous and byproduct categories. The byproduct, all non-metal components called “fluff,” is tested for hazardous waste before being used as landfill cover. The processed scrap is transported for export to be recycled further and eventually used in the manufacture of new goods.
Pulverization of metal requires metal-on-metal friction, which in turn creates heat and combustible dust that gets tamped down inside the shredder by water and dust-suppressing agents creating steam and runoff. Scrap acceptance guidelines prohibit hazardous materials and liquids from entering the facility but likely fail to prevent contaminated feedstock, which routinely causes explosions, smoke and odor.
Despite DEP’s order of best management practices, the facility emits excessive noise, house-rattling vibrations, noxious odors, smoke and airborne shredder debris. The fear of scrap fires plagues residents living within hundreds of feet of the facility, the latest belch of black smoke having occurred Jan. 23.
Excel has been slapped on the wrist with fines by MassDEP and OSHA. No amount of money, though, can replace a man’s fingers. In 2018 an employee lost multiple fingers in a conveyor belt accident. It occurred months after selectmen voted to not renew Excel’s annual license. Recently, New Bedford Superior Court reversed that vote and forced reissuance of Excel’s license. That ruling is being appealed in Boston.
Excel holds no special permit. A scrap yard did not need a special permit from the town, a commercial recycler did; and, according to Excel Recycling and MassDEP, Excel Recycling is not a recycler. Current Freetown building inspector Jeffrey Chandler thinks differently. He ordered Excel to cease and desist until acquiring a special permit. Excel will not abide, hence Freetown and Excel are battling it out in Boston land court.
State hazardous waste regulations, though, seem to support Chandler’s interpretation, as Excel Recycling’s “scrap recycling facility,” a legal state definition found on various documents pertaining to the facility, seems to fit perfectly within 310 CMR 30.212:
“…Class A regulated recyclable materials are those…that, because of some inherent property of the materials, or because of some inherent property of the recycling process, or because the conditions of the recycling are such as to motivate the recycler to manage the recycling with minimum hazard to public health, safety, and welfare, and the environment, have been determined by the Department to require a degree of regulation sufficiently stringent to protect public health, safety, and welfare, and the environment, from any significant potential hazard….”
Yet, all scrap metal is excluded from these regulations. The scrap metal recycling industry, nationwide with the exception of a few states that have gotten wise the hard way to its heavy impact, is regulated by a cherry picking of regulations, which allow for enough threading of loopholes to stitch together a straight jacket for any town that says yes to one of these “scrap yards.”
Fortunately, Massachusetts has a regulatory framework for regulated recyclable material (RRM) within its hazardous waste regulations. “Processed scrap” needs to be included in the definitions, and it and any “scrap recycling facility” needs to be pursuant to these regulations, so as to prevent from happening again what occurred, and as a result wreaks havoc on neighborhoods every day, in Freetown.
According to analysis conducted at Nelson Labs in New Hampshire, elevated levels of Antimony, Arsenic, Beryllium, Cadmium, Chromium, Copper, Lead, Mercury, Nickel, Thallium and Zinc were found in swabs recently taken of windowsills on homes that sit in close proximity to Excel’s shredder. To date, MassDEP has not tested the air or water for metal contamination. Excel sits atop the town’s aquifer.
I have seen what metal recycling looks like in this state and I have not been able in good conscience to toss my metal into the recycling bin. It goes in the trash. And it will continue to be garbage until this situation in Freetown is fixed and fixed for the next “scrap yard” that dare follows in Excel’s footsteps.
Leia Adey
Assonet