The Maryland Department of the Environment informed community leaders Monday that it had made a "tentative determination to deny" the request from Petroleum Recovery and Remediation Management, Inc., known as PMI, to construct two mixed-waste petroleum tanks at 1030 East Patapsco Avenue. The site sits across the street from Benjamin Franklin High School and near residences.

MDE spokesman Jay Apperson said the agency found that "the proposed project poses an unacceptable public health risk and that Petroleum Management Inc. cannot ensure safe, compliant operations." He added that the public and the applicant will have an opportunity to comment before a final decision is issued.

Company officials did not respond to a request for comment.

For residents and organizers who have spent years fighting a cluster of industrial facilities in the far South Baltimore community—including a CSX coal transfer operation and a medical waste incinerator—the announcement marked a significant win.

"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."

Campbell said the decision reflects years of community warnings that state regulators had too often ignored. "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," she said. "Granting the permit would have been terrible, especially given the past history of this group."

That history includes a June 3 fuel oil spill, when a valve failure on a PMI vacuum truck sent an estimated 200 gallons of mixed waste fuel oils onto roughly a half-mile stretch of Pennington Avenue. About 25 gallons entered a city storm drain, and residents reported hazardous driving conditions and strong, burning odors for hours. MDE inspectors confirmed the spill's origin.

In 2022, a deadly explosion and fire at PMI's 5218 Curtis Avenue location killed an employee. Maryland Occupational Safety and Health officials later found 16 safety violations, 12 of them serious, in connection with the incident. A 2024 federal consent order identified PMI as a major source of health-harming emissions, including volatile organic compounds and pollutants such as benzene, toluene and styrene. That same year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a $230,000 settlement with the company over violations of the Clean Air Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and Clean Water Act.

PMI had argued the expansion was needed to manage growing volumes of recovered materials. In a 2025 letter to the community, Operations Manager W. Scott Alexander wrote that the company needed bulk storage to unload trucks daily and separate materials, and that doing so would reduce the risks of transporting large volumes of waste.

But the Community of Curtis Bay Association rejected that reasoning in written comments to MDE, warning that placing bulk petroleum storage next to homes and a school "raises grave concerns about the safety of students, staff and families" and increases the risk of fire, explosion and other catastrophic events. The group noted that the area already contends daily with coal dust, noise and hazardous materials transport.

The tentative denial is not final. MDE will accept public comment before issuing a final decision, a step that community advocates say they will use to reinforce their case.