The Industrial Redevelopment Committee on Tuesday further defined the area of the idle Avtex Fibers rayon plant in Front Royal that it wants the Environmental Protection Agency to study first in the hope that it can be released for reuse.

A subgroup of the committee decided last mouth to ask the EPA to put four sites at the top of the list to test and clear for reuse -- the administrative offices; the dispensary; the polypropylene facility and a facility that adjoins it; and the accounting building, which is the first structure on the right as visitors enter the plant.

The panel on Tuesday added more than 20 acres of open space at the front of the plant.

The committee decided to keep the Ed Stump playground, leased by the town from the company, and the parking lot on Kendrick Lane off the list of priority sites. They are not part of the EPA's work plan and the agency would have to amend the plan, which took more than a year to draft, to include them.

The EPA and the FMC Corp., a former owner of the plant, are scheduled to begin their study toward the long-term cleanup of the site in June. The priority sites chosen by the redevelopment group will fit into the work plan, Chairman Fred Foster said.

"We're not hindering. We're just asking them to do these (areas) first," he said.

Also Tuesday, Avtex bankruptcy trustee Anthony H. Murray Jr. confirmed that someone has shown an interest in about five acres across Kerfoot Avenue from the playground, which is also owned by Avtex, but is outside the plant fence.

The person is local, he said, but he declined to identify the potential buyer until an offer is submitted to the bankruptcy court.

The land, zoned residential, is long and narrow. Town Planner Kimberley P. Fogle said townhouses would be one use of the land.

The plant will start to look shaggier during the summer because the trustee was forced to lay off his maintenance staff due to lack of money.

Mindy Schryver, who works at the plant for Murray, said no one from the EPA has returned her phone calls to answer questions she has due to the departure of the maintenance squad.

The service she is getting from the agency is "pitiful and really a waste of money," she said.

Foster said, until last week, the plant's lawn was neatly maintained, but is now starting to grow out.

"It's going to look like a Superfund site," Ms. Schryver said.