When Lionel Medina moved with his wife from the Bronx to Port Liberté in 2022, he thought he’d finally found peace and quiet. “It was the place we wanted to spend the rest of our lives.”
His Bronx neighborhood, Riverdale, had grown noisier after the pandemic, with loud music blaring from cars on the streets nearby. Port Liberté, he believed, would provide an escape.
But Medina would soon learn that his new home in the isolated condominium and townhouse development near Bayonne was anything but tranquil.
Just to the south, across a narrow channel of water, sits the massive Sims Metal scrap metal yard. It is, says Medina, who runs his network engineering business from a home office overlooking Sims, nightmarish to live next to. “I’m on meetings constantly. The noise that comes from Sims is unbearable. “It’s like having an airplane constantly overhead.”
Among Sims’ equipment is a 9,000 horsepower “Mega-Shredder,” described as a “machine that can turn a car into fist size pieces in just ten seconds.” Operating day and night, the Sims facility processes junked vehicles, trains, engines, appliances, plumbing and electrical scrap metal, and explosion-prone batteries.
Medina says his health has suffered. An asthma sufferer, Medina had managed to avoid an attack for twenty years. “Six months after moving in I started to notice that I was getting wheezy and my eyes were tearing…It’s been difficult to breathe when I’m in my office.”
Medina purchased an air quality sensor. When the wind blows from the south he says “it goes off the charts.”
Bright lights illuminate the Sims scrapyard through the night. Medina says he had to buy new blinds for his bedroom in order to keep the light out.
Fed up, Medina, along with nineteen other Port Liberté residents have now filed a class action lawsuit in New Jersey Superior Court. The 51-page complaint alleges that “exceedingly loud noise, massive fires and explosions, noxious odors, blindingly bright lights” along with potentially toxic “fine particulate matter and dust” produced by Sims have combined to “invade and do substantial harm to the lives of Plaintiffs.”
Sections of the complaint describing fires at the facility give a flavor for life next to Sims from the residents’ perspectives. “On or about May 24 and 25, 2021, a fire at the Sims Facility sent ‘thick black smoke into the air.’ The fire broke out on May 24 and ‘continued to burn through the night,’ before it was finally controlled. Smoke from the Sims Facility was so popular, it could be seen for ‘thousands’ and residents in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx smelled it.” The Jersey City Fire Department and the Fire Department of New York have both responded to fires at the facility, it says.
A 2021 petition seeking to shut down the facility came to naught. Port Liberté residents have, says the complaint, “formally complained to the City of Jersey City, Mayor, City Council and municipal prosecutor about Defendants and the noise at the Sims Facility.” The Jersey City Police Department has “responded to the Sims Facility on multiple occasions for ‘Noise Complaint(s).’”
Ward A Councilmember Denise Ridley, who represents Port Liberté, said she had not been involved in a resolution of the Sims situation. “Any issues I received were forwarded to the City Prosecutor’s Office… if a resident reached out I directed them there/forwarded their request and that office took the issue over for enforcement.”
Asked about the lawsuit, a spokesperson for Sims wrote “We work hard to comply with all applicable regulations. We have been operating at Claremont for more than 50 years and like other major industrial enterprises rely on the port location to operate our business. Many of our employees live and work in this community, and we take every step to be good neighbors as we work to ensure the recycling of consumer products like automobiles, refrigerators, as well as other metal products and materials. It is crucial to remember that recycling, like the metal recycling undertaken at our Claremont facility, is an important public good.”
The Port Liberté residents are represented by attorneys William C. Matsikoudis, Derek S. Fanciullo, and Aspen-Jade C. Tucker, of Matsikoudis & Fanciullo and G. Martin Meyers, Justin A. Meyers, and Susan S. Singer of Law Offices of G. Martin Meyers.
