ONE LAST WISH: A SLOW BOIL

Things are definitely looking up for U.S. manufacturing as this year comes to a close. The midterm elections publicly rebuked the socialist agenda of the Honorables, restoring optimism and hope for manufacturers across our nation. A full 63 percent of our readers now report that business has increased and order backlogs are building, and 6 percent of those are reporting a “large” increase.

That’s not all. The reshoring initiative led by Harry Moser, the chairman emeritus of machine tool builder GF AgieCharmilles (Lincolnshire, IL), and coordinated by the National Tooling and Machining Association (NTMA) and the Precision Metalforming Association (PMA) appears to be gaining momentum on its mission to correct the impact of 20 years of U.S. manufacturing decline from offshoring.

Ford Motor Company announced they will be reshoring nearly 2,000 jobs by 2012. General Electric plans to move assembly of its energy efficient water heater from China back to the U.S. General Motors and Dell both plan to open U.S. manufacturing plants. All of these follow over 2,000 high-paying jobs that returned to the U.S. in two other newly built plants. One is the NCR plant that opened last year to build ATM machines in Columbus, GA, after shutting down manufacturing in China. The other is Farouk Systems, which stopped manufacturing in China and moved their hairstyling tools production into a plant in Houston, TX.

Our last wish for this year is that all of this manufacturing momentum will carry enough gravitas to derail Boiler MACT, the proposal issued in June by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that will force industrial, commercial and institutional boilers and heaters to use “maximum achievable control technology” to reduce harmful emissions that erode air quality and pose a public health risk. This rule will cover industrial boilers used in manufacturing, processing, mining, refining and commercial boilers used in malls, laundries, apartments, restaurants and hotels.

The EPA argues that implementing this rule will prevent 1,900 to 4,800 premature deaths in 2013 by reducing pollutants like dioxin, mercury and carbon monoxide, as well as asthma, bronchitis, heart attacks, hospital visits and lost work days ? all worth a value of $17 billion to $41 billion in 2013 alone. That sounds pretty good.

But wait, the devil lurks in the details.

A scathing report recently released from Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on a Senate environmental panel, contends that “the newly proposed rule on cleaning up boilers nationwide could devastate America’s manufacturing base and imperil hundreds of thousands of jobs without providing any real public health or environmental benefits by putting nearly 800,000 jobs at risk over requirements on commercial and industrial boilers, cement plans and ozone standards.” But how?

The report, titled EPA’s Anti-Industrial Policy: Threatening Jobs and America’s Manufacturing Base, states that “reducing emissions of mercury, hydrogen chloride and other hazardous air pollutants from commercial and industrial boilers is good policy. But the manner in which the EPA set standards (my emphasis) to reduce those emissions is impracticable and costly.”

The report explains how the proposed standards are so stringent that not even the best performing sources can meet them, according to the Industrial Energy Consumers of America, (IECA), which represents companies with 750,000 employees and $800 billion in sales. And there’s the catch. The IECA is “enormously concerned that the high costs of this proposed rule will leave companies no recourse but to shut down the entire facility, not just the boiler.”

President Obama has already repeated in interviews released that energy policy remains one of his top priorities, and he will throw the weight of his office behind energy policy regulations in the same way he did for the new health care law. “We’re going to stay on this because it is good for our economy, it’s good for our national security and, ultimately, it’s good for our environment,” the president said in a Rolling Stone magazine interview.

This report came one day after a bipartisan group of 41 senators, and a month after a group of a 100 bipartisan House members, wrote a letter to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson strongly condemning the proposed rule to clean up industrial boilers. The lawmakers agreed that this rule could wreak havoc on U.S. manufacturing. The lawmakers urged the EPA to consider a flexible approach that allows companies to show that emissions of certain pollutants do not pose a public health threat. Among the lawmakers who signed the letter were several endangered House and Senate Democrats from manufacturing states. Ah yes, gravitas.

The agency is required to finalize the proposal on Boiler MACT by December 16. Time to cross our fingers and make one last wish.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Mike Riley is the editor of Fabricating & Metalworking magazine and the author of Backfield In Motion (Derek Press, 2007). Share your views with him on how you view the overall agenda of the EPA at 205-681-3393 or mriley@fabricatingandmetalworking.com/.