The state says St. Paul foundry is coating homes with soot

A St. Paul iron foundry that’s fighting in court over its air emissions faces a new accusation: that it’s polluting nearby homes with lead-tainted soot.

The revelation, laid out in court documents earlier this month, comes after neighbors in the Payne-Phalen neighborhood lodged complaints with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency about the fine black dust. The state and the foundry, Northern Iron, have been locked in a court battle since last year, as the company argues the state is overreaching in its efforts to limit pollution.

One of the foundry’s neighbors, Brittany Bruce, bought her home on Wells Street behind the foundry in March 2024.

Bruce said she found herself constantly cleaning a stream of dust inside her home. She didn’t suspect it was coming from the foundry until November, when an upstairs tenant who had heard about the issues abruptly left. Now she’s worried about the health of her three children.

“I bought this house with my life savings, with no clue what was going on across the street,” Bruce said. Fine black sediment is settling inside her windows, and Bruce has resorted to running air purifiers in every room.

In a Feb. 10 letter to Ramsey County District Court Judge Leonardo Castro, the MPCA’s attorney, wrote that its testing showed “the soot contains heavy metals, including chromium, cobalt, lead, and manganese, just like the samples MPCA obtained from Northern Iron’s facility.”

The agency said in an email it was still investigating the soot, and could not send detailed test results to the Star Tribune.

Alex Lawton, CEO of Northern Iron owner Lawton Standard Co., said in an interview that the foundry is working toward a solution with the agency, but said he could not comment on the soot because the issue was so recent. “We’re trying to get to the bottom of it,” he said.

Northern Iron opened at 867 N. Forest St. in 1906 and today employs about 80 people. The shop molds made-to-order metal components that other companies use in finished products. Lawton Standard, a Wisconsin company, bought the business in 2022.

That same year, the MPCA inspected the site and found that the foundry had expanded its operations without amending its air permit. The violation led to a $41,500 fine in 2023 and a negotiated plan to fix problems with pollution-control equipment.

As the months wore on, however, Northern Iron’s own calculations showed its emissions of fine particles and lead were thousands of times above acceptable levels. In April 2024, the MPCA issued an order requiring the company to curb its production and take other measures to reduce the risk of pollution.

Northern Iron sued to overturn the order, and argues that subsequent air monitoring shows it’s not releasing excessive emissions. Lawton said that the limits on melting metal would have put the company out of business. Judge Castro agreed in part, ruling that the state could not set limits on the foundry’s melting volume or hours of operation.

Other parts of the MPCA’s order were left intact. The state and the company have continued fighting in court over data and deadlines for actions, including a test of emissions from the site’s smokestack. Northern Iron argued that it couldn’t perform the test after a fire broke out in rooftop filtration equipment in December. The MPCA responded this month that the reason “does not make sense” because the fire happened in an area that was not going to be tested.

In court, the company was “writing its own rules for how it should get to behave, for how it should get to prove compliance with air quality standards,” said Melissa Lorentz, an environmental attorney who has closely watched the case and also lives on the East Side of St. Paul.

Lawton conceded that the company had not done a perfect job of responding to the MPCA’s requests, but said he hoped the sides would come to a resolution.

“Administratively, we’ve done poorly, partly because it went into litigation, and then everything gets weird, and the lawyers do the lawyer thing on both sides,” he said.

Lawton has accused the state of taking a hard line with his foundry because of what happened with a different iron melter, Smith Foundry. That foundry, in the East Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis, was accused of air pollution violations by EPA in 2023, leaving neighbors nearby wondering why the state had not acted earlier. After an EPA settlement and a wave of neighborhood activism, the foundry shut down. This week, a demolition crew began dismantling the building.

In Northern Iron’s case, the acrimony between the business and the state was itself an issue in a Feb. 21 court hearing. An attorney for the foundry asked that the pause be approved without delving into too many details, lest the discussion devolve into “mudslinging.” The MPCA also requested the pause.

“I would like a reduction in the mudslinging, that would be helpful,” Castro responded. He approved the pause in the case that day.

MPCA spokeswoman Becky Lentz wrote in an email that the agency wanted the pause so it could focus on writing a new permit for the foundry that would be more protective of public health.

Meanwhile, residents such as Bruce are left wondering how to protect themselves from the fine black dust settling in their windows, on the siding of their houses and on top of their cars.

“There is no permit that is safe for a residential neighborhood,” Bruce said.