“It just felt like we had to try something.” That mindset drove Newport residents to take on a scrap metal shredder, and over the years of work, their grassroots effort produced answers.
When Newport residents saw a problem in their community, they banded together in search of a solution. Not for one issue, but for three identified surrounding River Metals Recycling, known locally as RMR, at 1220 Licking Pike in Newport.
The residents initially used the court system, prompting RMR to move its shredding operations to Cincinnati, addressing the noise component of the problem. Then, they used Northern Kentucky University to help facilitate soil sampling and partnered with the Federal Environmental Protection Agency Region 4 to conduct air quality testing around RMR.
Both the air quality and soil testing results, shared with Newport residents in February, showed pollution near RMR stayed below federal danger levels, while still revealing some patterns tied to the facility.
“It just felt like we had to try something,” said NKY Sierra Club member Andrea Ankrum, who helped lead the air quality study. “You had to keep trying, because this was affecting people’s lives, and they were worried if this was unhealthy, but it’s absolutely grassroots. We couldn’t have done it without the volunteers and everybody putting all this time into it. It was a lot of work, and it was really hard, but I think it was worth it in the end, to give people peace of mind.”
Newport resident and chair of the RMR citizens’ group, Annette Kitchen, said having these independent, non-Newport residents serve as project leaders and provide objectivity and fairness in both studies was critical.
“This was not a push down from the top, or an enforcement action by the city, EPA or anybody else,” said Newport Commissioner Ken Rechtin, who has been involved in the efforts since the beginning. “Yes, at the end of the day, they were all involved. The city was involved, but it really was based on the local folks.”
Kitchen was the Newport resident who helped get the ball rolling on all efforts surrounding RMR back in 2019. Her work has always stemmed back to the question: how can the corporation be a good neighbor, living within city limits?
Air Quality Testing
The yearlong air quality study found pollution never reached “unhealthy” levels, but spikes disappeared once RMR’s shredding operations ceased.
Ankrum reached out to the federal Environmental Protection Agency because it issued an enforcement alert in 2021 about open-air shredders, like the one that operated at RMR, and the pollution they can produce. Fast forward a couple of years, when Ankrum contacted the Federal Environmental Protection Agency Region 4 (based out of Atlanta but covering Kentucky), she said they were very interested in conducting a community air quality study and loaned the Sierra Club the sensors.
The “PurpleAir” sensors measured particulate matter, or PM 2.5, which refers to fine, inhalable particles in the air, such as organic chemicals, heavy metals and dust.
“We were actually the pilot study,” Ankrum said. “They were starting up this program where they will try to help communities around the country do these types of air quality monitoring when nobody else will help. The state of Kentucky flat out said they would not do any air quality monitoring.”
The 10 sensors collected data from June 2024 through May 31, 2025.
The group also had a video camera across the street from RMR so they could see when the shredder was running and correlate explosions in the shredder with the data.
In addition to the sensors, they had a control site in Wilder, roughly two miles from RMR.
The PurpleAir sensors automatically uploaded their data into the cloud because everything ran on WiFi. Then Ankrum did the data analysis. Another Sierra Club member wrote a computer program that checked the sensors daily to ensure they were collecting data and functioning properly.
The Environmental Protection Agency worked with the Sierra Club as consultants throughout the process.
The sensors collected data in 10-minute increments, and then Ankrum would combine it into one-hour increments, which is what the Environmental Protection Agency uses for their studies on health risks.
Over the course of the year, using the one-hour data sets, Ankrum said, there was never a time when the air quality reached the unhealthy range.
Ankrum shared the air quality results with residents at a Clifton Neighborhood Association meeting on Feb. 10.
“That [unhealthy air] is what they were concerned about,” Ankrum said. “You know, was this unhealthy for them while the shredder was running? And really, it never got into that unhealthy zone ever.”
RMR officially moved its shredding operations out of Newport in April 2025, so the study collected data with the shredder running and without.
“When they stopped shredding there that air quality data looked so much better,” Ankrum said. “I think that’s the story as well, once they stop shredding, I’m not seeing those daily big spikes in the PM 2.5 during the week anymore.”
There is a clause in the agreement between RMR and Newport that if the Cincinnati facility exceeds its capacity temporarily, RMR can use the Newport facility for no more than 75 days in a 12-month period. They must also make “reasonable efforts” to provide a 48-hour notice.
Most of the noise complaints regarding the site’s shredder came from explosions that would occur due to propane tanks being left in vehicles or washers and dryers going through the shredder. One objective of the study was to measure those significant air pollutant events. During the year of the air quality study, Ankrum said there were only a few small explosions and none resulted in fires.
“I think that was reassuring as well, that even if there was an explosion, it didn’t really change what was already happening with the shredder,” Ankrum said. “It didn’t make it go crazy, air pollution. That was a good finding as well.”
One of the objectives Ankrum said they haven’t addressed yet was using the air quality study to determine whether RMR was violating its air quality permit.
“Their permit, there’s language that says they’re not supposed to have particulate matter come across the fence line for more than five minutes, or close to that, and we can show, if we start looking at the 10 minute data we’re showing that there was particulate matter coming across that was being picked up by our sensors,” she said.
Even though the one-hour data did not show that the air was unhealthy, Ankrum said that if you looked closer at the 10-minute data, some of those spikes could get pretty high, close to the unhealthy levels.
Now that the air quality study around RMR has concluded, Ankrum said the next step would be to look at stronger environmental controls on scrap metal shredders across Kentucky.
She said the hard part is still to come.
“Newport had a win because RMR isn’t shredding there anymore, but how can we spread this across the state of Kentucky?” Ankrum said.
Soil Testing
Similar to the air quality study, the soil testing came back below the level of concern for metals.
NKU Professor of Biological Sciences Christine Curran and her environmental toxicology class partnered with the Clifton Neighborhood Association to conduct soil testing as part of a service-learning project. That kicked off at the end of 2023.
“There were arsenic levels that were higher, but they were all below the level of concern,” Curran said. “There was a pattern of closer to RMR, higher levels, farther away, lower levels, but the level of concern was not reached.”
Curran said soil testing can provide a longer-term view of what’s been accumulating over time, more so than air testing. The soil testing was wrapped up in the fall of 2025, and Curran presented the results to Newport residents at the same meeting at Ankrum in February.
Newport residents near RMR volunteered to have the soil on their property tested. One group of students looked at volatile organic chemicals, one looked at ecological impacts, and one looked at water quality (in the Licking River). Curran said there were also teams dedicated to literature searches for risk management.
Overall, testing was done at 16 Newport sites, with control sites upwind or upstream of RMR. The sites were separated into different zones, “red, yellow and green,” or the “closest, farther and farthest away zones.”
“All of the students as a whole did an excellent job providing information that would be beneficial to the property owners and the city of Newport,” Curran said.
Not surprisingly, Curran said higher levels of metals were found in the soil on properties downwind of RMR.
“For zinc and copper, this actually was probably the most informative data in terms of a pattern,” Curran said. “There was a very clear line of demarcation when you were close to the plant, a little farther up the higher elevation, or at a greater distance, and then the farthest away. So for the two, again, they were all under [the level of concern.]”
Curran said the team also found no high levels of concern for metals in the Licking River.
While the residents were very interested in learning as much as possible about the shredder’s impact, Curran said there are other possible contributing factors in the area.
“There’s a lot of traffic down Route Nine,” she said. “There’s the railroad going east, west. When we floated the rivers there’s all the rusting metal on that river that could have contributed.”
Curran said the testing the students conducted was more of a screening-level test. There are established U.S. Environmental Protection Agency methods for testing soil that could be more diagnostic should the Newport group be interested in going that route.
“The conclusion of the Sierra Club study that air emissions and soil around our facility was healthy and remained under the levels of concern is consistent with publicly available air quality data that we monitor,” RMR said in a statement to LINK nky. “RMR has invested millions of dollars and made significant efforts to streamline our Newport operation and address community concerns, including ending metal shredding operations at our Newport recycling facility in May 2025. We continue to pride ourselves on taking every reasonable step to be a good neighbor and corporate citizen, and the company remains committed to protecting the environment through best practices in our operations.”
“We don’t have fires anymore, our fire department isn’t called to the site anymore, we don’t have explosions anymore, and we don’t have this plume of soot and dust and smog hovering off our city,” Rechtin said. “So things are better. Things are much better. This is a small group that recognized an issue and pushed and pushed and pushed and got results.”
Kitchen said she reminded residents that the studies occurred during a time when the facility reduced its shredding operations and wondered what the results would be had they been conducted earlier.
“The study officially started post-moving those shredding operations, so this was in their reduced capacity, right?” Kitchen said. “Can you imagine what the results would have been when they were exploding, 60 to 70 times a year, three days a week?”
Kitchen said she would still like to dive deeper into the water-quality testing of the Licking River.
“I think it’s something that all of us really should be proud of, because I never thought in my life I’d be part of would have such ramifications, and everybody that participated should pat themselves on the back,” she said.
