OAKLAND — A West Oakland metal crushing plant with a troubled history and two of its employees are no longer facing criminal charges and possibly millions in fines after Alameda County District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson’s office quietly dismissed a case against Radius Recycling.
The DA’s decision on Friday ends one of the hallmark prosecutions announced by her predecessor, Pamela Price, over a 2023 fire that allegedly spewed toxic smoke over the East Bay. It comes just weeks after an Alameda County judge booted multiple prosecutors from the case in a searing recusal order where he chided the lead prosecutor being negligent and “disingenuous.”
The move means Radius — formerly known as Schnitzer Steel — will no longer face the specter of up to $33 million in fines in a case that former District Attorney Pamela Price once heralded as “historic.” At a July 2024 press conference announcing a 10-count grand jury indictment, Price lampooned the company for having a “terrible legacy of environmental racism and poison in Alameda County that has had a deleterious impact on West Oakland.”
“We believe that Radius has often shrugged off the regulations when it was convenient to them, treating minor administrative fines and civil penalties a cost of doing business,” Price, who voters recalled last fall, said at the the time.
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for Jones Dickson said the decision had little to do with the judge’s recusal order, but rather the office’s ability to prove the case at trial.
“We took a deep dive in the case, and after a thorough review of all the facts and evidence, we determined there was insufficient evidence to proceed further with the case,” said Casey Bates, a longtime prosecutor with the office.
The prosecution was centered on a fire that sparked on the property of Radius Recycling on Aug. 9, 2023, in a large debris pile at the company’s plant at 1101 Embarcadero West, near Jack London Square. The pile contained aluminum, tin, light iron and steel and burned out of control for more than three hours, before continuing to smolder and put up smoke well into the following day.
The blaze prompted nearly 50 pollution complaints to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which issued an advisory urging residents to stay inside with their windows shut.
The ensuing grand jury indictment claimed Radius had a habit of allowing fires to start on its West Oakland plant, while suggesting its employees neglected safety protocols in the days before the fire, then destroyed evidence from the ashen “tin pile” as a way to conceal how the fire started. In addition to the company, Radius General Manager Daniel Woltmann and Terminal Manager Dane Morales were also indicted.
The move to dismiss the case drew immediate pushback from Ms. Margaret Gordon, a longtime advocate against air pollution in West Oakland. She criticized Jones Dickson for not being more aggressive in seeking to hold Radius Recycling accountable.
“I’m not understanding why the DA wants to give them a slap on the hand,” Gordon said Tuesday. “The health of West Oakland residents should be at the forefront of the DA office’s concern.”
Pollution and fires have long been a concern at the metal crushing plant which dates back to the early 1900s. As recently as 2021, Radius agreed to pay $4.1 million to settle allegations by the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, the state Attorney General’s Office and the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office that the company broke state environmental laws by releasing particles of hazardous metals — such as lead, cadmium and zinc — into the air.
On Tuesday afternoon, Bates stressed that “the DA’s office is committed to protecting the environment and the safety of our citizens.”
“This case isn’t a departure from those values,” Bates said. “Rather, we’re guided by the principle that we can only proceed in cases where we have sufficient evidence to proceed to trial, and in this case, we didn’t have it.”
Attempts by this newspaper to reach Radius Recycling’s spokesperson Tuesday were unsuccessful. A call by this newspaper to Price was not returned.
The ashen 40-ton “tin pile” left behind by the August 2023 fire played an outsized role in the monthslong legal battle.
In particular, the two sides sparred over whether Radius had been allowed to clean up the pile in the days following the blaze, or whether it should have been kept intact while prosecutors built their case against the company.
Prosecutors initially argued that the company’s decision to do away with the smoldering heap amounted to destruction of evidence — particularly since Gabriel Markoff, the lead prosecutor in the case, sent Radius’ leaders an eight-page letter just two days after the fire sparked ordering them to preserve evidence from the blaze. The indictment noted text messages sent between employees referencing how at “this point, we’re all in it together,” while employees also spoke of “just keeping everything off record lol.”
Yet Radius’ attorneys later that the company allowed authorities to “inspect the burned scrap metal and other fire debris and take photographs and samples.” Radius’ leaders also informed authorities they would “start shredding the burned material later that day to eliminate any risk of further fire – a practice routinely used and approved by the government and fire authorities.”
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Scott Patton suggested Markoff’s letter never once specifically mentioned the burn pile by name, and the one mention of “physical and electronic evidence” in the letter was in reference to “writings,” not specifically the fire scene. Patton called it “incredulous” to suggest Markoff’s initial letter “unequivocally directed them to maintain the 40-ton burn pile.”
“I find Markoff’s continued insistence on the contrary to be disingenuous,” Patton wrote in his order, dated April 30.
The judge also said that if prosecutors’ allegations were true, then allowing a burn pile to remain unmoved for longer than a few days “created an unacceptable public health hazard.” Instead, Patton wrote, prosecutors should have done more to “act immediately” to preserve any evidence that the pile may have contained toxic chemicals.
While Patton’s recusal order specifically targeted Markoff, the judge also barred three other prosecutors from the case: Michael Fox, Simona Farrise Best and Dana Drusinsky. Two weeks before Patton issued his order, Markoff gave notice to the court that he planned to leave the Alameda County DA’s office on May 9. Farrise Best was not employed by the office at the time of Patton’s order, and Drusinsky had previously been assigned elsewhere.
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