MDE tentatively rejects Curtis Bay petroleum cleanup company’s permit request
A plan to construct two waste oil tanks across the street from a high school “poses an unacceptable public health risk,” MDE says
Above: Firefighters respond to the 2022 fatal fire at PMI’s Curtis Avenue facility. (YouTube)
State officials have denied the permit a Curtis Bay company that provides petroleum spill cleanup services needs to expand its operation in the far South Baltimore community.
The Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) informed community leaders today it has “made a tentative determination to deny” the request by Petroleum Recovery and Remediation Management, Inc., or PMI, to construct two mixed-waste petroleum tanks on its 1030 East Patapsco Avenue property.
The announcement was welcome news to residents who have opposed PMI’s air quality permit request, which would have allowed tanks to store waste oil in close proximity to residences and across the street from the Benjamin Franklin High School.
“This is super exciting. MDE did the right thing,” said Shashawnda Campbell, environmental justice director for the South Baltimore Community Land Trust. “This company was trying to move in right across the street from the high school I graduated from.”
MDE tentatively determined “that the proposed project poses an unacceptable public health risk and that Petroleum Management Inc. cannot ensure safe, compliant operations,” spokesman Jay Apperson said.
“The public and the applicant now have the opportunity to comment before a final decision is made,” he added.
Company officials, reached by phone, have not yet responded to The Brew’s request for comment.
For community leaders fighting for years to protect residents from the impacts of a wide variety of industrial facilities – a CSX coal transfer operation and medical waste incinerator, for instance – today’s news was an important victory.
“We’ve been saying to the state multiple times that these facilities are very harmful or toxic, creating big problems. Yet you keep giving them permits even after they do things wrong,” Campbell said.
“Granting the permit would have been terrible, especially given the past history of this group.”
Sand covers a portion of a June 3, 2026 fuel oil spill by a PMI truck on Pennington Avenue. BELOW: Shashawnda Campbell leads a protest in 2022 against the CSX coal operations, flanked by Meg Chow and Carlos Sanchez. (Angela Shaneyfelt, Fern Shen)
A Spill and Fatal Fire
PMI, which provides oil spill clean-up and other environmental services in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and northern Virginia, is no stranger to violations.
In June, its trucks spilled fuel oil along a half-mile stretch of Pennington Avenue in Curtis Bay, subjecting the community for hours to hazardous driving conditions and a strong, burning gas odors that had residents gagging and reeling.
MDE inspectors who responded to the scene confirmed the origin of the spill.
“On the morning of Wednesday, June 3, 2026, a valve failure on a PMI vacuum truck caused a fuel spill along roughly a half-mile stretch of Pennington Avenue,” a spokesman at the time said.
An estimated 200 gallons of “mixed waste fuel oils” spilled onto the roadway, about 25 gallons of it entering a city storm drain.
In 2022, a deadly incident occurred PMI’s 5218 Curtis Avenue location when a devastating explosion and fire killed an employee.
Maryland Occupational Safety and Health (MOSH) officials ultimately found 16 safety violations, 12 of them serious, in connection with the incident. The report described the company as treating 10,000 to 15,000 gallons of petroleum contaminated water per day.
Other issues also surfaced.
A 2024 federal consent order disclosed that PMI was a major source of health-harming emissions, among them VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) and a laundry list of other toxic air pollutants, including:
1,1,2-trichloroethane, 1,2,4-trichlorobenzene, 1,3-butadiene, 1,4-dichlorobenzene, 2,2,4-trimethylpentane, acrolein, acrylonitrile, benzene, carbon disulfide, chloroform, ethylbenzene, hexane, m & p-xylene, methyl ethyl ketone (2-butanone), methyl isobutylketone, methylene chloride, o-xylene, styrene, toluene and vinyl acetate.
The same year the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a $230,000 settlement with PMI over multiple violations of the of the Clean Air Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the Clean Water Act.
Area (marked in red) on East Patapsco Avenue in Curtis Bay where PMI wants to put two petroleum storage tanks. (Company letter to the community)
Community Pushback
Seeking community support for its latest project, company officials explained last year why they believed the expansion was needed.
“As our growth and reach of services expands, our need to manage recovered materials has expanded as well,” PMI Operations Manager W. Scott Alexander wrote in the 2025 letter.
“Our facilities need bulk storage to unload trucks daily, facilitate the separation process and segregate the resulting components,” he continued, arguing that the ability to unload trucks daily would be a safety improvement, “minimizing the transport and risk of large volumes of material in transit, public exposure and unnecessary cross contamination of materials.”
Community leaders pushed back at an MDE hearing held earlier this year and in written statements to the agency.
In one letter expressing strong opposition, the Community of Curtis Bay Association rejected PMI’s argument of better safety, instead warning that the site’s location near homes and a school “raises grave concerns about the safety of students, staff and families.”
Bulk petroleum storage adjacent to a residential area “increases the risk of fire, explosion and other catastrophic events that could irreversibly harm the community,” the group said, noting that the area is already subject on a daily basis to coal dust exposure, loud noise and hazardous materials transport.