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THE WARREN SENTINEL Avtex reclamation begun by students By Roger Bianchini "I know a lot of you wondered if this day would ever come," FMC site manager Doug Bement said as he stood over 23 acres of remediation project land at the Avtex Superfund site in Front Royal on April 12. Bement was marking Arbor Day with assembled local, state and federal officials on Avtex land near the Shenandoah River. The newly developed remediation project will be part of an anticipated 51 acres that will be released as part of the Nature Conservancy Park next year. The Conservancy Park ultimately will encompass 241 acres of the site that had previously been used for fly ash, sludge waste and viscose impoundments. The future use has been designed for passive recreation, hiking , biking, and river access, and a wildlife refuge. The Arbor Day ceremonies marked the climax of weeklong tree plantings by Warren County Public School students on reclaimed land above one of the former ash basins. Second-graders from A.S. Rhodes were on hand with town and county officials, businessmen and representatives of the Environmental Protection Agency, FMC Corp., the state Department of Environmental Quality and school officials to celebrate Arbor Day at Avtex. Bement told the assembled group, including some governmental officials who have been involved with the Avtex site for 20 years or more, "You wondered when it would actually be remediated and now we're there." Bement said the 23 acres over the former ash basin, "has been cleaned and covered with two inches of new topsoil." But beyond the cleaning aspect, the FMC site manager was excited that the actual remediation is now underway. "These tree plantings are part of the revegitation of the land. That revegitation will be done with 26 species of indigenous native hardwood trees and 14 kinds of native summer grasses and grains," he pointed out. Warren County School Division Director of Instruction Joyce Wimmer observed that she hopes to see annual visits to Avtex remediation sites made part of the school system's science curriculum. "Visits like this are a wonderful hands-on experience for students" she observed." "And especially for younger students like these, to come back over the years and see the evolution of the reclaiming of the land back into the community as a park will give them a more profound connection to the process and its result." Wimmer added that the school system already has records of Warren County High School students monitoring of the 460 plus acre federal Superfund site as part of the school science department projects that date back over 10 years. |