Chico Scrap Metal leaves neighborhood after pressure

The Chico Scrap Metal facility in that California city has closed after almost 50 years of operation, with media reports citing “years of litigation” as the reason.

According to the Sacramento, California-based KCR-TV website, the facility’s opponents are “happy to see it close,” and the station quotes a former Chico mayor as endorsing that point of view.

“This has been a really tragic chapter in the city, that we've avoided the responsibility of closing down a contaminated site that is impacting a local school and local neighborhood,” the TV station quotes former Mayor Karl Ory as commenting.

Ory and others, according to the TV station, have “pushed to get Chico Scrap Metal relocated” from its current location for about a decade.

A Chico resident is quoted as saying the closed facility was “across the street from the biggest food processor in this community” and was “a couple of hundred feet away from a great school.”

The online article quotes a Chico Scrap Metal owner named Kim Scott as saying investigations into the concerns showed the facility was not a threat. Scott says in part, “We are below any commercial contamination; we’ve never impacted the school, [and] that is scientifically proven.”

Scott says the company decided to close down and adopt plans to relocate to the southern part of Chico, which is in Butte County, California. She told the TV station it will cost around $4.5 million to relocate.

The company also operates a second location in Chico, notes Scott.

Also in California, about 90 miles from Chico, a Sims Metal yard in Sacramento attracted attention in April when a fire there attracted fire fighting crews.

Twitter messages from the Sacramento Fire Department referred to the incident as an “incidental fire” that both broke out and was extinguished on Monday, April 11.