For over a hundred years, the metal finishing industry has existed in America, quietly touching our lives without being noticed by the general public. The industry exist as a portal through which manufactured goods pass and become finished products, either ready for use by consumers or sent on to manufacturers who take the pieces and add them to other products. Almost every product in our homes and offices has passed through the finishing layer of the production process. From table legs to car bumpers, cabinet knobs to belt buckles: metal finishing is a ubiquitous, if unnoticed part of our everyday lives.

Brownfield News Photo by Mark Johnson The commonplace nature of metalfinishing–freshly plated hinges pile up at Northwestern Plating Works, a metal finishing company in Chicago

Today, however, it seems that it is an industry under siege. Compliance with stringent domestic environmental regulation is slowly eroding profit margins, while, at the same time, cheaper foreign competition is biting deeply into the industry’s historic market. The resultant economic pressures are forcing more and more of these business out, while at the same time, the very regulations that made it difficult for them to compete profitably make it difficult for them to get out of the business, as well.

In the past thirty years the industry has become the object of intense governmental scrutiny. With the advent of the environmental age, the metal finishing industry became one of the first and most closely regulated industries in the U.S. Metal finishing firms are now closely scrutinized by everyone from federal and state governments to local water treatment works.

The reasons for this are mainly historical. One of the most widely used finishing processes is a process called electroplating. The electroplating process is fundamentally simple. The piece receiving the finish, the cathode, has a positive electrical charge run through it and is placed in a tank containing a solvent, either acidic, basic or, in some cases, neutral, and metals salts. The material that is being applied, the anode, has a negative charge run through it and is also placed in the tank. As the solvent dissolves the anode, the anode breaks down into negatively charged ions that are then attracted to the positively charged cathode. The process is so simple that children perform it as a science fair project.

The environmental problem stems from the fact that all the materials used in the process are very hazardous. When these materials have outlived their industrial usefulness, they have to be disposed of very carefully because these solvents and metals, if disposed of improperly, can be absorbed into the soil, and from there into the groundwater supply. The solvents present less of a danger. Over time they will neutralize themselves as they act on the materials in the soil and break down, but the metals will never lose their potency. Metals like chromium, sodium, cadmium and nickel, materials often used in large quantities in the metal finishing process, are elements. They cannot be broken down.

Until the advent of the EPA and environmental regulations, metal finishers often disposed of these waste products in the most expedient and economically viable manner available to them. Past practices involved dumping into sewers, on the ground, into waterways—wherever it was easiest. Metal finishers were in no way special, or sinister in this, they were simply adhering to the accepted business practices of their time. During most of the last hundred years that metal finishers have operated in this country, they have operated without any sort of environmental oversight. No one during that time had any idea that the environmental practices of industry, or rather the lack thereof, would have such an enormous impact on the land that we left our children.

And now, they are paying the price. Regulations aimed at the metal finishing industry today are designed to not only ensure that future environmental contamination is reduced and tightly controlled, but also as a way to redress the past environmental sins of the industry. As a result, environmental regulation has become something of a trap for the metal finisher.

According to the EPA’s Common Sense Initiative, found on the agency’s web site, there are two types of metal finishing plants operating today, the captive and job shop type plants. “Captive” metal finishing plants are those that exist as a part of a larger manufacturing operation. These operations are better able to comply with environmental regulation because they are part of a larger company and are able to capitalize and staff efforts to comply with regulations. The “Job Shop” type of metal finisher, however, tends to fare less well. “Job Shop” type metal finishers are smaller, independently run businesses with limited capital and personnel to deal with environmental issues. Environmental regulation has caused a huge upsurge in their cost of doing business. Upgrading plant waste management technology and monitoring plant emissions has carried with it a substantial cost. A cost that many of the smaller metal finishers have difficulty dealing with.

As a result metal finishers have learned, out of necessity, to take a proactive approach in their business practices. Dave Jacobs, owner of Northwestern Plating Works, a profitable metal finishing plant on the West Side of Chicago relates, “Anytime we make a change in our production we have to look at the environmental impact. If you want to stay in business in this industry, you have to have that sort of forward thinking or you’re going to be put out of business. It might not happen tomorrow or the next day, but the next [regulation] is going to kill you if you haven’t been keeping current.”

Brownfield News Photo by Mark Johnson Vats of plating solution dominate the floor at Northwestern Plating Works.

A very intelligent sentiment, but it is very expensive to do—keeping current means new equipment and procedures.

In addition, American metal finishers have to deal with much cheaper foreign competition. According to Jacobs, “A lot of manufacturers have sent their business overseas because they have found that they can have a piece plated and finished for less than the cost of just plating here, and that includes the cost of freight. Foreign platers don’t have to worry about the same regulations that we do.”

The government is trying to respond to the concerns of the metal finishers. The EPA is moving away from the old command and control system of regulation in favor of incentive based methods of regulation. Programs like the National Metal Finishing Strategic Goals Program have been designed to promote environmental goals that are “better than compliance” by offering reduced regulation in exchange for quantifiable results based on set standards. Gregg Jordan, liaison for the Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA headquarters for Brownfield Development, explains. “There are really no bad actors here. We’re not trying to punish anyone. Metal finishing is a very old industry in America. Most of the transgressions happened before there were regulations or even an understanding of the need for them. What everyone is trying to do is to rectify the effects of too many years of misuse.”

For some metal finishers, however, the cost of compliance with EPA mandates and the loss of business to foreign competition simply becomes too much. At that point they find that there is no easy way out. “Due to Superfund legislation,” Gregg Jordan says, “many metal finishers are stuck. They are stuck with a business that may no longer be economically viable, but they are unable to sell because they have too many environmental liabilities for most developers to take an interest.”  According to the Superfund, whoever owns an environmentally challenged property is liable for it. The possibilities of having to commit to a massive cleanup project to make a property usable and then assuming long range and potentially expensive legal responsibility thereafter are daunting to most developers.

Daunting to most but not all. There is a small, aggressive and growing cadre of developers working cooperatively with government and industry economic specialists who work with and are actively seeking environmentally challenged sites. Steve Goode, a real estate professional working with Venture One Real Estate, lays out the situation like this—“Let’s say you have a property that you can buy for $5 million if it’s clean. That same property might cost $1 million if it’s dirty. If you can clean it up for $2 million, you stand to make a profit of $2 million on the deal. The developers who actively seek out these types of properties know what they’re doing. When they go into a property, they know how it’s going to be cleaned up, to what level and how they’re going to be involved in, up front.”

“What you have to remember,” says Paul Schoff, a developer at Brownfield Development, “is that the brownfield development business is essentially a real estate business. It’s market driven. A brownfield deal is governed by the same factors as any other real estate deal. What determines whether or not a contaminated property is viable or not is whether the property is viable or not.” Said more simply, if a property has a good location and access to necessary resources—sewage, roads, utilities, etc.—then it is a good prospect. If it doesn’t, it’s not.

“At that point,” Schoff continues, “the environmental issues become just another factor to be dealt with, such as a closing difficulty or a zoning issue.”

Steve Campbell, a developer at ANB, in San Francisco, goes further. “If you know what you are doing, the environmental issue becomes the least challenging of your developmental issues. It’s something that can be dealt with once the decision to go has been made.”

These developers are taking advantage of an opportunity created by the current social and political environment that is eager to see these brownfield  areas reclaimed. Many state and local regulators have eased restrictions on the level to which a contaminated area must be cleaned. In allowing that a site need only be cleaned to the level of use as opposed to being brought to a pristine level, regulators dramatically reduce the cost involved in reclaiming the land and increase its attractiveness to developers. In addition, many state and local governments offer tax incentives in order to encourage development.

After over thirty years of environmental regulation, it seems clear now that the most effective means of redressing the past century’s difficulties of pollution and environmental misuse is for government and industry to work together. By working together an atmosphere is provided for both the metal finishing and development industries to succeed financially and in an environmentally intelligent manner while, at the same time, pursuing their own best interests.

Maurice Lee is a freelance writer and novelist from Chicago