State Secretary of Economic Development Cathleen A. Magennis said Monday that she cannot say whether the cleanup of the former Avtex Fibers plant in Front Royal is taking too long until she reviews cleanup contracts and a long-term work plan.

But after a tour of the site, she said she isn’t surprised at the condition of the idle plant.

There is no work plan for the long-term remediation of the site, but Environmental Protection Agency officials told the local Industrial Redevelopment Committee about two weeks ago that the site is nearly complete.

During the tour, Ms. Magennis appeared surprised that the cleanup has cost more then $17 million since the EPA became involved after the plant closed in November 1989.

Ms. Magennis, in town for Gov. L. Douglas Wilder’s announcement of a new service at the Virginia Inland Port, took a brief tour of the plant late in the afternoon with Front Royal Mayor Stanley W. Brooks Jr. and Frederick G. Foster, chairman of the redevelopment committee, whose focus is the reuse of the former rayon plant.

The tour consisted of a drive around the plant site, with one stop to look at a vast warehouse where finished rayon was stored before it was shipped out. Foster said the committee worked for weeks to get Ms. Magennis to tour the site so she would have some idea of its redevelopment potential.

Brooks said it bodes well for the plant’s eventual redevelopment to have as many voices on as many levels as possible.

Ms. Magennis said her department may not play a major role now, because the plant now falls more in the jurisdiction of the Department of Natural Resources, but said her department may become more active when environmental liabilities are worked out.

Ms. Magennis said she visited the plant before, shortly after is closed, when she was in the development business an not connected with state government.