Municipal Castings

Municipal castings are those ductile iron or grey cast iron infrastructure products that are used by cities and towns on roads, sidewalks and underground drainage systems. These are those iron grates, manhole frames and covers, drainage basins and frames, traffic signal boxes, street lighting boxes and other utility castings.

In the United States there is a Federal law that requires that municipalities that are using Federal highway program dollars purchase infrastructure products from American foundries. This provision of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act has not been negated by NAFTA.

All municipal and infrastructure castings must be stamped with the country of origin. There are some less than ethical foundries outside of the US that will stamp their products “Made in the USA”, it is therefore up to the purchasing municipality to ensure that they are indeed purchasing castings made in the United States.

There are some foundries that mass produce generic castings, which work for many towns. However, there are also foundries that specialize in custom designs and pride themselves in being able to reproduce historic casting designs to match those infrastructure castings already in use by a town or city.

Not every foundry produces municipal castings; therefore it is important that you check each casting foundry for their specialties in casting.

For more information about Municipal Castings.