Bobby Harper hangs cookware pieces at Lodge Manufacturing.
Rep. Chuck FleischmannWASHINGTON – Joined by dozens of fellow lawmakers, U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., sent a letter Monday to the Environmental Protection Agency challenging a regulation that could hurt Lodge Manufacturing Co. in South Pittsburg and other American foundries.
The regulation targets “mineral processing industries” such as gypsum and talc producers and deals with air quality and emission standards. Fleischmann argues that the rule should not apply to foundries because the EPA expressly intended to exempt them.
“Metal casting is not a mineral processing industry,” the Ooltewah Republican’s letter states.
Still, the EPA in recent months has enforced the air quality regulations at foundries in the Midwest. Industry experts said it’s because foundries purchase a type of industrial sand that the EPA regulates at the supplier level.
Fleischmann considers the situation an example of an overzealous federal bureaucracy he has deplored since entering Congress in 2011. His letter seeks a formal exemption for foundries. Much of its text borrows from the website of the American Foundry Society, a Washington-based lobbying organization.