Up and running

A St. Paul foundry fought the environmental bureaucracy — and won.

For more than a century, Northern Iron & Machine foundry has been a fixture in St. Paul’s traditionally blue-collar east side, at one point also home to Whirlpool, Hamm’s Brewery, and 3M. One of a handful of foundries remaining in the Twin Cities, Northern Iron got a new lease on life two years ago. A company with an established reputation in the business, Lawton Standard Co., took over to expand operations and provide dozens of union jobs for decades to come.

Lawton operates seven metal plants in four states, with headquarters in Wisconsin. Within weeks of becoming acquainted with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), however, company officials began to have second thoughts about doing business in the North Star state.

“If I’m just sitting in my boardroom with the group talking about things, yes, it was clearly a bad business decision,” Alex Lawton, CEO of Lawton Standard, said in an interview.

Lawton’s environmental bona fides preceded its move to the Twin Cities. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources website commends the firm’s “commitment to superior environmental performance” going back to 2013 as the state’s first foundry to be recognized under the “exclusive Green Tier Registration Permit” program.

Despite an environmentally friendly track record, Lawton immediately got off on the wrong foot with Minnesota regulators, which became apparent when the company attempted to resolve issues inherited from the previous owners over air permit requirements and violations.

“We were dumb enough to buy what we thought was a pretty fixable paperwork problem, right?” Lawton said. “Everything was a paperwork problem, not a pollution problem.”

Lawton’s arrival in the state coincided with a crackdown on Smith Foundry, located in an urban Minneapolis neighborhood, initiated by a surprise raid by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agents. The action led to an agreement to eventually close that foundry, as well as a sense the industry was in regulators’ crosshairs.

“Shutting down the furnace and casting operations is a win for this community, which has been historically disenfranchised and overburdened by pollution,” said EPA Regional Administrator Debra Shore.

Neighborhood and environmental activists soon turned their attention to Northern Iron. Lawton held community meetings, ultimately spending $2 million upgrading the plant and air monitoring equipment that provided residents with real-time emissions readings online. A stipulation agreement allowed Northern to continue operating pending a new permit. Yet permit talks dragged on for 18 months, even after the agency fined the foundry $41,500 for the pre-existing issues.

According to an MPCA news release, “Northern Iron LLC removed, modified, or replaced pollution control equipment throughout its iron foundry facility without seeking required amendments to its air quality permits before making the changes. The violations occurred over 15 years.”

In May 2024, MPCA directed Northern Iron to scale back operations by two-thirds in a dispute over the company’s air monitoring equipment. The company insisted that the monitors not only showed that the emissions levels were well below state and federal safety standards but also that the company was closed on the days of the alleged violations.

“The data from the monitor does not have any correlation to the hours of operation and is inconsistent by day,” Northern Iron said at the time.

Lawton laid off 15 percent of its workforce. Faced with $500,000 in attorney fees, potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional fines, and no resolution in sight, the company reluctantly sought recourse in the courts.

A review of documents and data led District Court Judge Leonardo Castro to conclude the air quality around the foundry met safety standards. The court gave Northern the green light to resume full operations while upgrading equipment and emissions modeling.

Yet the continuing uncertainty over the foundry’s future drove United Steelworkers District 11 to send a pointed letter to MPCA Commissioner Katrina Kessler.

“Our members who work at the facility are concerned about the impacts of MPCA’s enforcement actions on the longevity of jobs at the facility,” the union letter stated.

Nevertheless, the stalemate persisted until a January 2025 hearing when the court called out the agency’s heavy-handed tactics.

“My reading of the documents that were submitted for this hearing does give me a sense that the MPCA has engaged in quite a bit of bullying in this litigation,” Judge Castro said. “…What I don’t understand is why it took so long for the MPCA to respond, allowed it to build up these penalties, and then make these threats.”

At a February hearing, the MPCA blinked, asking the court to put the case on hold until May to enable the parties to finish the job.

“It is the MPCA’s responsibility to protect Minnesota communities from pollution and hold polluters accountable,” MPCA said in a statement.

Northern welcomed the apparent breakthrough.

“Our company has always wanted a cooperative working relationship with our regulators that benefits us all,” Northern said in a statement. “We agree with Judge Castro’s comments today in court, ‘Let’s get this done, keep jobs going, and keep the community safe.’”

That’s not asking too much for a business that prides itself on being the original recycler.