The San Diego City Attorney’s Office filed a lawsuit against a scrap metal recycling company in Barrio Logan, alleging that it has violated local and state laws and has created a public nuisance for years.
Prosecutors filed the complaint on Wednesday in San Diego Superior Court. According to the lawsuit, SA Recycling, LLC expanded its business on a 3.75-acre lot located on Main and 32nd streets without city permits. For years, the complaint said, the company has been conducting auto wrecking and dismantling and construction and demolition debris recycling too close to residential homes without the city’s authorization.
Residents have long complained about traffic, noise from pounding machines or from trucks starting at 6 a.m. and air pollution from large diesel trucks idling throughout the day on nearby streets.
“Companies that disregard the City’s laws and public health protections put entire neighborhoods at risk,” City Attorney Heather Ferbert said in a statement. “No one should have to live next to unpermitted heavy industrial operations that pollute the air, damage property, and harm families.”
SA Recycling, which has been doing business at its Main Street location since 2007, did not respond to a request for comment.
The 29-page lawsuit details how, in April 2019, the city received a complaint that the scrap yard was running a recycling and processing facility and developing the yard without city permits. SA Recycling’s Main Street site has been within city zones that allow for its operations so long as the facility is not located within 150 feet of a residential neighborhood. The exceptions, according to the city’s municipal code, are that a facility be within an entirely enclosed building and that it acquire conditional and neighborhood use permits.
SA Recycling is less than 150 feet from a residential neighborhood and never obtained those conditional and neighborhood permits, the complaint said, adding that the company gained an unfair advantage over businesses that do comply with local and state regulations.
City zoning investigators inspected the property several times between 2019 and this year, where they confirmed the unpermitted operations. The company had also constructed new buildings with bathrooms and a kitchen area with plumbing and electrical systems. Several structures that appeared to be historic buildings of more than 100 years old were also demolished, the lawsuit said.
The grading and construction work at the property had altered drainage patterns, “increasing the quantity of runoff,” according to the complaint.
Inspectors had also found a newly built truck weigh station and a loading bay for semi-trucks without a building permit, as well as an unpermitted automotive lift and saw storage containers for hazardous materials, such as diesel fuel.
At its current state, the city alleges in its lawsuit that the property “is injurious to the health, safety, and welfare of the residents and families who live in the community and interferes with the comfortable use and enjoyment of life and property.”
Barrio Logan resident Julie Corrales agrees, and says residents and environmental advocates have “been definitely calling (the company’s operations) out as a nuisance for a really long time.” She is the executive director of Tierras Indigenas Community Land Trust, a nonprofit in Barrio Logan working to purchase land in historic neighborhoods as a way to curb displacement and gentrification.
“SA’s been a problem there for a really long time because of the trucks, because of the idling, because of the noise,” she said. “When they’re doing the compacting (of) the cars… the whole neighborhood shakes.”
Barrio Logan has endured decades of severe pollution due to highway construction, heavy equipment and trucks at the port of San Diego and industrial facilities operating near homes, schools and parks. Residents and environmentalists successfully pushed for the Barrio Logan Community Plan, a blueprint for developing the neighborhood with industrial buffer zones and with more green spaces and affordable housing over the next several decades.
Corrales added that, “it was encouraging to see in the complaint that the city’s been investigating this way back.”
The April 2019 complaint the city received about SA Recycling’s alleged unpermitted operations was the first time the city learned about the problem, Ibrahim Ahmed, a spokesperson for the City Attorney’s Office, said in an emailed response.
“The investigations have been extensive and ongoing,” he added when asked why the city had filed a complaint against the company years later.
SA Recycling has been involved in multiple lawsuits. It’s been sued by the state and federal governments over hazardous waste and Clean Water Act violations. In 2019, the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District cited the company for diesel truck idling in an area 70 feet of residential property. The company also had a large fire that broke out during a late night in July 2015, frightening people who lived nearby.
The city said in its complaint that it wants the company to immediately cease its alleged illegal operations and be fined up to $2,500 per day for each violation.
