Newport residents headed to Frankfort this week to meet with attorneys at the attorney general’s office over ongoing complaints regarding explosions at River Metals Recycling.
According to Newport resident and RMR citizens group chair Annette Kitchen, the meeting continued a process she started in 2021 to meet with the attorney general. However, she said there had been nine-plus explosions from RMR since Feb. 20, when an agreement was signed between Newport and RMR to work toward dropping misdemeanor charges for violating the city’s noise ordinances.
Kitchen said that the meeting is part of the resident’s continued commitment since the explosions re-started the day after the agreement was signed.
In 2021, Kitchen sent a 25-page document to the attorney general’s office, the Biden administration, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency and the national Sierra Club in California.
She said it was crickets from all agencies until recently.
Newport Commissioner Ken Rechtin connected with former senator Wil Schroder, who now works as Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman’s Transition Team co-chair.
“The attorney general is taking an active role in at least listening to determine if there is action to be taken,” Rechtin said. “So that’s a big positive.”
The meeting’s goal on April 17 was to determine whether the ongoing issues with RMR are a case the attorney general should take on.
“We want to talk about an overall perspective of how the industry works and what it does,” Rechtin said. “We’ll talk about how pollution prevalent they are. And then, we’ll talk about the timeline, where we’ve gone from where we are now.”
In addition to Rechtin and Kitchen, Newport Clifton Neighborhood Association President Chad Silber and Legislative Chair for the NKY Sierra Club, Brant Owens, also attended the meeting.
“Chad Silber will talk about the impacts this industry has had on the victims,” Rechtin said. “I think the word victim is very valuable here because it goes back to other AG efforts to fix the overreach or overactions of some industries.”
Silber said many people are telling him they are still feeling the explosions coming from RMR.
“There has been a lot since the agreement has been signed,” Silber said. “It’s the same thing. Houses shaking, the smell, the particulate matter, the sound that hits the houses and rattles the windows. It’s the same stuff we’ve been dealing with for a while, and it was controlled for a little while, and I think everybody understood that the court case was going on and the spotlight was on RMR. It seems like as soon as the ink dried on that document, they just ramped it right back up.”
Silber said the explosions felt “vindictive” and said residents feel that RMR has total disregard for them.
“I hear the word nuisance still talked about a lot,” he said. “A lot of people don’t have quiet enjoyment of their homes. They’re shaken out of bed in the morning.”
The misdemeanor charges against RMR that Newport brought forth are still ongoing, even though an agreement was signed in February. Per the agreement, RMR is given 12 months to move its shredding operations to the former Garden Street Iron & Metal based in Cincinnati and acquired in October 2023. A review for the case is set for Feb. 24, 2025, but should RMR comply with the agreement before 12 months, the case will go before Campbell County District Court Judge Cameron Blau to drop the charges.
More specifics of the agreement can be found here.
Kitchen said explosions persisted from about Feb. 20 until about the middle of March and that the city had been in contact with RMR.
After the city sent emails to RMR regarding the issues in March, Vice President and General Manager of RMR Bob Eviston sent a letter to Newport City Manager Tom Fromme.
“We understand that the city continues to receive communications from residents regarding RMR’s Newport operations and its plan to move its shredding operations to RMR’s newly acquired facility,” The letter from Eviston said. “As a result, RMR would appreciate the opportunity to meet with you and your staff to address the complaints that the City has received since the entry of the Diversion Order in Campbell District Court on February 20, 2024 (“Order”).”
According to RMR, the Newport site has added “resources and reduced throughput in an effort to reduce the incidence of combustion events” since the April letter was sent.
“There has not been a single combustion event since our letter to City Manager Fromme on April 3, which is when we added resources and reduced throughput at RMR Newport,” said River Metals Recycling General Manager Neal Coulardot.
As an update to the April 3 letter, RMR said it has also installed the fire rover ahead of schedule and is now operational.
Kitchen questioned the company’s intentions by installing a fire rover.
“What is the purpose of RMR installing a fire rover?” Kitchen said. “We didn’t ask for it. The EPA didn’t ask for it. So, if you are truly only going to be an intake facility and you are truly only accepting conforming materials, why do you need a fire rover to detect hotspots? There’s language in that agreement that gives them the opportunity if the market goes in a certain direction, they can immediately fire it up (the shredder). They can’t fire it up if their equipment goes down in certain locations. So what was the purpose?”
Regarding the number of combustion events at the Newport site, Eviston said, “City officials have always recognized that combustion events are cyclical and unpredictable. Indeed, while the number of combustion events immediately following entry of the order was higher than usual, the number of events during the first quarter of 2024 has been consistent with the first quarter of prior years.”
The entirety of Eviston’s letter to the city and a “Fact Sheet: RMR Newport Facility – Current Operations & Future Plan” can be reviewed here.
Owens said he lives roughly half a mile from RMR. He said he keeps an air monitor on his roof, and the monitor skyrockets whenever there is an explosion.
Aside from being a Newport resident, Owens attended the meeting to represent the NKY Sierra Club, which has acted as a connector to use some of the resources and relationships to help the RMR citizens group get in touch with the federal EPA and some other resources that have helped their process.
“Being newly appointed to this legislative role, I wanted to tag along to keep the Sierra Club informed and the West Side Citizens Coalition informed and to lend any kind of support that I can,” Owens said.
Rechtin said the four of them have lowered their expectations of what an outcome could look like. He said they don’t expect a yes or no answer but hope to begin the conversation with the attorney general’s office.
“In closing, I’m going to pound on the state EPA,” Rechtin said. “I think they have failed in their charge to protect us. I’ve been many times ignored at the state level. Who else is going to watch the people who are supposed to protect us and make sure they’re doing their job other than the attorney general’s office.”
Kitchen said nothing concrete came out of the meeting.
