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The San Antonio City Council will soon consider a series of recommendations to sections of the city code that regulate Metal Recycling Entities (MREs) and Used Auto Parts Recyclers (UAPRs).
The push for new regulations came following community outcry over a series of fires at recycling plants in the last several years.
The council’s Planning and Community Development Committee unanimously approved the recommendations to be reviewed by the full council in a future A Session.
New recommended changes include a requirement for MREs and UAPRs to correct code violations more quickly, the authorization for the city to impose the more quickly processed civil tickets in addition to criminal tickets for violations, clarification that the Development Services Department (DSD) director may revoke certificates of occupancy for companies operating without a valid license, and the modification of a current policy that authorizes DSD to suspend or revoke licenses of companies who have three accepted citations within a 12-month period.
The recommendations were formulated by a task force of community and industry representatives, which has spent months in debate over definitions and potential rules.
DSD, which oversaw the taskforce meetings, took a pause on the taskforce in February and restructured its makeup and schedule after community members complained that, as a result of wavering attendance, they were being consistently outvoted.
DSD Director Mike Shannon said a major focus of the recommendations was enhancements to fire safety measures, the issue that sparked the code updates in the first place.
“This was a big topic of conversation, fire prevention and public safety,” Shannon said. “This is probably one of our biggest recommendations. It adds a requirement for every yard — existing and new — to have a fire prevention plan submitted to the fire department so that they can review it for pre-planning purposes, and that … identifies things like water supplies, access, fire notifications, etc.”
If a company has a fire, the San Antonio Fire Department Chief would be authorized to require the company to bring in a third party to evaluate the effectiveness of its fire prevention plan and suggest modifications.
The recommendations would also not permit any new MREs or UAPRs from being established within 1,000 feet of existing recycling plants, unless the city council explicitly offered a waiver; require recycling plants to paint their metal fences to reduce reflectivity and heat transfer; increasing pest and vector control from every six months to every three months; and reducing the required grass height on recycling plant properties from 12 inches to four inches.
Also, code enforcement officers would be required to report all noted spills on MRE and UAPR properties to the appropriate agencies, including the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, San Antonio Water System, or others.
Monterrey Metal Recycling is one of the largest companies of its kind in San Antonio, and its CEO Jordan Vexler sat on the taskforce.
“We participated with the best intentions, striving to educate and find balanced solutions,” Vexler said to the council committee members on Thursday. “While this process has often been dominated by activist voices, I believe we’ve reached a fair outcome that acknowledges both community concerns and the complex regulatory environment in which we already operate and comply. I support the revised code.”
Debra Ponce, the District 4 community appointee to the task force and a climate justice organizer with the nonprofit Public Citizen, said it was not her objective nor the objective of other community members to hurt recycling companies.
“Number one, I want to say our task force has never been against recycling businesses,” Ponce said. “That’s never been our goal. … Our only focus has been to stop the ordinary pollution and repeated fires that community has been complaining about in these neighborhoods.”
Ponce went on to encourage the council to closely review code recommendations that would give UAPRs more freedom to expand within their existing property boundaries — in line with pre-existing rules for MREs — that she said was in conflict with the city’s Zoning Commission rules.
District 5 appointee Cheyenne Rendon told the council to consider adding language that did not make it into the recommendations that would lower the required height of “fluff” piles — a combination of ferrous, or metal, and non-ferrous material — which she said are fire risks.
Vexler rejected Rendon’s assertion of the danger of fluff piles.
“This has been a challenging process, and my family’s company has often been singled out with baseless, unsubstantiated claims like what you just heard,” she said after Rendon spoke.
Shannon said one item that did not make sense to include in the code but that the task force wanted the city council to consider separately was working with the TCEQ to install air monitors in and around areas with a high density of MREs, UAPRs, and other industrial facilities to track air quality.
He said he believed the end result was fair to all parties involved.
“I think we got a lot of good changes,” he said. “Did everybody agree on everything? Absolutely not. But at the end, we had some general agreement on a bunch of these items. And first and foremost, we’re proposing some increased options for enforcement.”
The full city council will review and vote on the recommended changes to the code in several weeks.
