A consultant's report that recommends the destruction of about 30 acres of buildings at the Avtex Fibers plant and disposing of the debris at the site paints a grim picture of the condition of many of those structures and some of the storage tanks inside them.

Prepared by Nathan Glen Adams of Roy F. Weston Inc. of West Chester, Pa., the report details Adam's Jan. 31 tour of the plant, a federal Superfund site.

"During and after the general walking tour it became quite obvious that the Avtex Fibers Superfund site is atypical and the project requirements are not simplistic or readily achievable," Adams wrote.

Adams describes the viscose cellar in section I as having two areas where the roof has collapsed and many areas where steel-column are flaking away.

"There are many vertical tanks that contain product and several tanks that are questionable as to their integrity as the steel tank walls have been extremely thinned due to external corrosion," he says.

In the viscose spinning areas, acid pits and the polyethylene plant in sections III and I, Adams found acid pits "in a serious state and possible failure ... structural failure is imminent. There were also tank failures found at the viscose storage tanks where the tank bottom head had cracked approximately 1/3 to 1/2 around at the tank tangent line."

Andrew Palestini, remedial projects manager for the Environmental Protection Agency, said Thursday that no concerns about hazardous materials seeping from tanks in the buildings have been expressed.

Acids have dissolved or washed away soil under a staple machine in one area and "the concrete floor slab had collapsed and left foundation footers, grade beams and other cast-in-place concrete foundations suspended without any ground-bearing support," Adams wrote.

Underneath, acids have dissolved or washed away soils "as far as the eye could see" looking north, he says.

In acid cellar 6C, Adams found that "the floor was flooded with liquids with pH at or about 1 or 2 and when rung produced a hollow note that is indicative of a hollow condition beneath the slab." One area of the floor was found to have a depressed section, he says. In

earlier inspections, he says, that area had been bulging.

Adams recommends that the following areas be dismantled: the southern area of section I, including the No. 2 churn and mix, No.2 acid heat, soda pressing No. 2, 6C viscose cellar and the section known as the polymer-polypropylene area; the cooling tower in section V; the' engineering lab, project shops and stores in section VII; and the entire areas in sections III, IV and VI.

He recommends that the smokestack and Avtex water tower be destroyed by Army Special Forces Command at Fort Bragg. The smokestack should be "explosively" imploded to "drop the stack vertically,'' he says.

"This would provide realistic training to qualified Army personnel for a classic military target and minimize project costs," Adams wrote. "Additional benefit would be to remove a highly visual element that would symbolize the start of a new era for the local population."

He estimates that the project would produce 21,425 tons of structural steel, 203,903 cubic yards of structural and other debris and 9,562 cubic yards of material containing asbestos.

"Conclusions and recommendations are that the Avtex facility be dismantled," Adams wrote.

He recommends that the debris from the demolition be disposed of in an on-site landfill cell, which he says would cost about $23 million. The cost of off-site disposal would be about $138 million, he says.