Houston steps in to fund cleanup after southeast recycling plant fire
Houston will pay for cleanup at a southeast recycling site after a tire fire, as smoke lingered and the owner was deemed unlikely to cover the cost.
A tire fire at Mammoth Metal Recycling tore through the southeast Houston site near Lawndale, and Houston is stepping in to pay for cleanup after Mayor John Whitmire said city officials determined the property owner could not cover the bill. The administration authorized the Houston Fire Department to contract with a cleanup crew.
The fire broke out Monday, June 23, at 700 Kellogg, where a large pile of trash, mostly tires, burned along with industrial piping. Smoke was visible for miles across Houston, and residents near Mason Park said they could still smell heavy smoke days later. No firefighters or civilians were injured, but the property’s history is now part of the investigation, and the HFD Life Safety Bureau is reviewing it.
Whitmire said the hazardous material pileup should never have been allowed to sit in a residential community in the first place. Houston Health Director Dr. Theresa Tran said air-quality and water-runoff checks were underway and had not reached levels of concern when officials last updated the public, but the city still moved quickly to bring in a contractor. The contractor is expected to work for two days before the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality takes over further cleanup steps.
The financial exposure for Houston is still unclear. The city does not yet have an updated cleanup estimate, even as it prepares to send a demand letter to the responsible party and keep the property closed until penalties and fees are paid. Houston has already pursued Mammoth Metal Recycling for unpaid taxes: the city sued the company in 2024 for about $70,000, and a default judgment in May 2025 topped $113,000 and included foreclosure of tax liens. The tax website still showed about $106,000 in back taxes owed.
Mammoth Metal Recycling Houston Land Co., LLC was tied to a 2023 federal fraud case involving more than $53 million in allegedly fraudulent pandemic-era loans, and one owner pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud ahead of an August 2026 sentencing date. A managing director, Prateek Desai, said the company was working with city officials and firefighters to contain and remediate the site, while the cause of the fire remains under investigation.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
