Article date: May 12, 2001

By Ben Orcutt

Staff members from the National Zoological Park’s Conservation and Research Center in Warren County are conducting scientific studies at the Avtex Superfund site in Front Royal that could serve as a model for the restoration of environmentally impaired sites throughout the world.

FMC Corp., a former owner of the Avtex facility in Front Royal, is overseeing the $80 million restoration of the former rayon manufacturing plant, which closed its doors in 1989 due to environmental pollution.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, along with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, is assisting FMC in the restoration effort.

Avtex is located on 440 acres on the South Fork of the Shenandoah River and restoration plans call for much of the land to be converted into a business park, a state -of- the- art soccer complex and a wildlife conservancy park.

FMC Director of Remediation Robert T. Forbes states in a recent letter to CRC Foundation President Eldon H. "Took" Crowell that FMC asked the CRC to monitor the improvement of the habitat at the Avtex site as restoration work progresses.

"CRC staff biologists have been conducting routine wildlife surveys (primarily birds and small mammals) to document the ‘baseline’ conditions as we begin restoration, and we certainly hope they can continue the monitoring process through the completion of site restoration over the next three to five years," Forbes states.

"Having the CRC facility in Front Royal has provided an unparalleled opportunity to access world class scientists to improve the quality of our environmental restoration project, which we hope will become a model and teaching tool for other environmentally impaired sites within the United States and around the world," Forbes adds.

CRC research scientist William J. "Bill" McShea, who has a doctorate in biology sciences from State University of New York, Binghamton, and he and a team of CRC staffers began collecting data at the Avtex site this past winter.

"It’s a good opportunity for us to give something back to the local community," McShea said Friday.

McShea said that he and CRC colleagues Jennifer Buff, Carolyn Emerick, John Watson-Jones and Jennifer Shirk are in the process of setting up monitoring programs at Rappahannock County and Warren County high schools, and Randolph-Macon Academy in Front Royal, so that students there can collect data on their local habitats to compare with the findings at the Avtex site.

"That way the kids get to feel like they’re part of a larger project," McShea said. "I think it’s a good idea."

The work of the high school students will be an important part of the habitat study, McShea said. Their work, he said, will help determine "how long it takes Avtex to get up to the same level."

"The potential is there," McShea added. "This is like a five year restoration that they’re (FMC) going through, so it’s going to take a while for it to happen."

CRC Foundation Director of Development Robert L. Michael said FMC is providing funding for the project.

"And it works out very well as a matter of fact," Michael said.

McShea said he and his crew collect habitat data at the Avtex site each month.

"I think it’ll be easy to document the increased animals, the increased plants (as restoration work continues)," he said.

McShea said it make sense for the CRC to become involved with the Avtex project because of its proximity to the site and the fact that many CRC staffers live withing the local community and have a vested interest in the restoration.

"If you hire somebody out of Manassas, they’re not going to care about all of that stuff," he said. "So we have more incentive to make that project as holistic as possible."

The affable McShea said that he’ll have a good indicator when the habitat at Avtex has been fully restored.

"For me," he said, "if we have wood thrushes singing by the settling ponds (collection basins for contaminated materials,) we know the restoration is complete."