A non-profit corporation may be formed to acquire the idle Avtex Fibers property in Front Royal members of the Industrial Redevelopment Committee said Tuesday that the private group would shield the town and Warren County from liability.

It also may be a way to speed up resolution of issues in bankruptcy court, where there are a number of claimants to the property of the Avtex estate. They include federal, state and local government, former plant owner FMC Corp., insurance companies that lent heavily to the company in the 1970s and 1980s and creditors of the company. Avtex closed in November 1989 and filed for bankruptcy the following February.

"Your committee is at a critical phase," town Mayor Stanley W. Brooks Jr. told the group. It has to choose between having meetings that rehash previously discussed topics and taking action to help redevelopment efforts once legal and environmental matters have been decided, he said.

The committee is now under the Industrial Development Authority, which is funded by the town and county.

The Environmental Protection Agency, charged with the cleanup of the plant, has come up with a new set of guidelines that would enable the agency to show greater willingness to negotiate with prospective purchasers of Superfund sites to assist in the reuse or development of contaminated or formerly contaminated property.

According to an agency report on administrative improvements to the Superfund program, the current policy restricts agreements not to sue to situations in which the agency is planing to take enforcement action at sites and in which a substantial benefit, such as payment

At sites where these criteria aren't met, cleanups that could be partially funded or conducted by private purchaser may be left to the agency to complete, which means that contaminated property that could be put to use is left abandoned for an extended period.

The committee wants to meet with the authority this month to discuss formation of a non-profit corporation.

Questions that need to be addressed, according to Brooks, are whether grant money from the state and federal governments will be available and what liability the authority would be exposed to if the committee eventually became the owner of the property and remained a part of the authority.

Brooks said the town needs to know whether it can be held liable for a portion of the cleanup costs if the authority or committee owns the site.