ST. LOUIS — Two recent actions — one in Washington and the other on the opposite coast — appear to have sharpened the focus on the states as a key battleground for new regulatory initiatives affecting architectural and industrial-maintenance coatings.
In Washington, the U.S. Court of Appeals rejected a legal challenge to the EPA’s national VOC rule on architectural and industrial-maintenance coatings — the so-called “AIM” rule — mounted by a group of coatings manufacturers. The group of companies, led by Dunn-Edwards Corp. and Smiland Paint Co. of Southern California, had filed suit in a bid to overturn the VOC rule, which went into effect last year.