THE WARREN SENTINEL
Article date: June 27, 2002

New Avtex demo work will begin on schedule

By: Roger Bianchini

At its meeting of Friday, June 21, the Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Authority was told by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers representative Al Opstal that a July 1 target date for the beginning of work on the next buildings to be demolished on the Avtex site will be met. "There is one date that we've been very sensitive about," Opstal told the EDA, "and that is July 1, 2002. Now I can say that, yes, we'll start on July 1," he said, adding, "In effect, we've started now."

The apparent target of the next demolition work is a square, green building known as "Shipping Number 5" and some adjacent brick buildings behind it. The group of buildings are located in "Section Two"at the site. "Shipping Number 5" is one of the closest Avtex structures to the administration building at the front of the property, which is being turned into office space for participants in the ongoing federally mandated Superfund cleanup.

Asbestos abatement has largely been completed and the first phase of demolition will be the removal of Shipping 5's roof. That is expected to cost $800,000 to $900,000. The demolition contract on that building was issued to a Baltimore, Md,-based company in May.

The abatement contract on another Section Two building has been issued and Opstal said that the demolition contract was expected to be awarded in September with demo work beginning in November. After being told this, EDA Executive Director Stephen Heavener asked Opstal, "So a year from now buildings one and two will be down?" Opstal said that both buildings should be down by May-June of 2003. There is a six month time frame for completing demolition of a building once begun due to the strict safety and other guidelines at the federal Superfund site of 467 acres.

"There is an enormous amount of debris in there," Opstal pointed out of the
buildings. "Debris is a hold up." He pointed out that the Corp has been forced to move the debris around from one place to another as they needed to access specific areas.

Responding to Heavener's question about removal of the debris, including a great deal of asbestos that is contained in the structures of the buildings, Opstal said that a separate contract for debris removal from the site exists. "It will be sold off site as scrap," he said.

Doug Bement of FMC, a former owner of the site involved in the cleanup, said that, "The asbestos will go to specialized facilities and landfill designed to handle that material. Steel and other building debris will be crushed on site and used for road fill," he pointed out.

The demolition work on these buildings has been allowed to start due to the Army Corps of Engineers signing of a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources on the specific work. Opstal pointed out that some of the Army officials were concerned that the EDA had not yet signed the MOA as a concurring party in that operation . "They asked, 'What's their (the EDA's) problem?' I said, " They don't have one," but they are very," Opstal skirted the word paranoid in his description of the brass's mindset that everything proceeded by the book.

The board, with a quorum present, unanimously approved a motion allowing Heavener to sign the MOA for the EDA. Opstal pointed out in a memo to the EDA that the signing as a concurring party did not make the EDA responsible for the provisions of the document. The MOA's with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources are necessitated by the former plant's eligibility for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places as the Avtex Historic District.

Opstal noted that the remaining $8.5 million of the $12 million allocated by Congress for the planned abatement and demolition work is not enough to complete the job. But he added that the Corps plans to aid the EDA in acquiring additional funding of about $10 million for the 2004 fiscal year. "We can't approve it," Opstal said of the Army Corps of Engineers seeking additional funding, "It has to be put in the political system. Front Royal is not that big a place on the map." he observed, "but this is an important project to us."

EDA Chairman Rick Novak suggested bringing Congressional representatives out to the site after the Corps has completed the bulk of the demolition work scheduled, " to show them what's been accomplished and remind them that we need to finish."

Describing the upcoming demolition of the two buildings, Opstal said that excavation cranes similar to ones that were used in clearing the World Trade Center site after the 9-11 tragedy would bring them down.

"They are not that big but they are very powerful," Opstal said of the cranes. "They reach in and grab out chunks of the buildings." He said that the cranes can even break steel I-beams. He added that there would be no explosives used to bring any portion of these buildings down. "There'll be no fireworks, sorry about that, even though we'd like you to go out with a bang." Bement replied of FMC's perspective, "We've had explosions (in earlier demo work). It's not that pleasant. We'd rather see you do it this way."