The Northern Virginia Daily

Article date: December 30, 2004

Avtex site progresses slowly

 By: William C.  Flook

 Many days have passed since Avtex Fibers stood as a towering icon of industry in otherwise rural Virginia.  Once a bustling hub of production that dispensed ton after ton of rayon to the allied military effort in World War II and later to NASA’s space shuttle program, nearly all that remains now is a great open field and a lonely, doomed powerhouse at the south end of what in 1986 became the Avtex Fibers Superfund site.

One day, the 440-acre cut of land will melt into Front Royal, the only remnant of its former self a small interpretive site amid a 162-acre office park, a 240-acre conservancy park, and a 30-acre soccer complex.  That reality, however, is a long way off.

The coming year holds a great deal of planning for the Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Authority, the joint town-county body charged with implementing the site’s redevelopment; FMC, the only non-defunct company to once own the plant; and the Shenandoah Center for Heritage and the Environment, a body created to preserve the history of Avtex.  All three entities have big plans, but few are slated to come to fruition in 2005.

In 1980, Congress enacted the CERCLA, or Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, more commonly as the Superfund.  The act not only set up a massive trust fund to clean up the country’s most polluted sites, it also held accountable those parties responsible.  From its 1940 opening to its 1989 closing, the plant was owned by three companies: American Viscose, FMC, and Avtex Fibers Inc.

Both American Viscose and Avtex Fibers Inc.  had gone belly up, and FMC, a Philadelphia-based chemical company, was stuck with the majority of the cleanup for what turned out to be a vast environmental catastrophe.  Years of disposing of the many by-products of rayon production had led to great toxic buildings on site, according to the EPA, which lists ammonia, carbon disulfide, antimony, and arsenic as contaminants originally found in groundwater and arsenic lead, and PCB’s in the soil.

But progress was made, and is ongoing today.  Over 200,000 tons of waste materials have been hauled away, and 30 acres of buildings on the site have been demolished, according to the EPA.  FMC site manager Doug Bement said FMC is now approaching the removal of 44,000 feet of chemical, sanitary, and storm sewers from the site.  Whether those sewers are contaminated and need additional work is yet unknown, said Bement, who is still preparing for what he calls “at least a two-year project to get done.”

“This is a year of planning for us,” said Bement, who oversees FMC’s portion of the remediation process.  “Working in this environment there area lot of checks and balances and safeguards.”

He said the soil on about half the site has been tested, revealing a very small number of contaminated areas.  Bement said FMC plans to complete testing all accessible soil on the site by February.  Removing asbestos and old brine-carrying pipes in the powerhouse should continue up through March, he said.  By the end of the year, FMC will likely begin work on closing eight viscose basins and bringing an old rayon-yarn landfill up to modern standards.  The EPA won’t be approving FMC’s work until 2006, after the sewer pipes have been removed, Bement said.

According to the EPA, the total cost of the Avtex cleanup, including FMC’s contribution, is an estimated $150 million.

FMC is also leveling fields and preparing drainage ditches on the site for the future soccer complex.  Bement said he hopes to have that work done by January, at which point Ballard Sports, a sports field construction firm, will begin work.  The four fields should be ready for play by spring 2006, Bement said.

Meanwhile, an ambitious conceptual plan for the business park has been put forth by the EDA, under the working title “Royal Phoenix,” comparing the site to a mythical bird that spontaneously bursts into flames at the end of its life, only to have a newborn phoenix rise from the ashes.  By May, EDA Executive Director Paul Carroll said he plans to have that Royal Phoenix conceptual plan turned into a marketing proposal to attract developers to the site.  Within 12 to 18 months after that plan is assembled, Carroll hopes to have a number of letters of interest from groups willing to invest in the large-scale project, out of which a single developer will be chosen.

“Any organization that comes in knows that it’s a time frame, that it’s a cleanup, that it’s a Superfund site,” said Carroll.

The current plan suggests a 150-room hotel and conference center, a culinary and wine institute, an artisan’s center, and sites designated for a broad range of business.  It focuses on “mixed -use development,” and calls for both technology and hospitality industries.

The adjacent conservancy park is also still in the early phases of planning.  Though many questions remain unanswered, such as how much the project will cost, what shape it will take and when, county officials say the Roanoke-bases architectural firm Hayes, Seay, Mattern and Mattern will most likely be selected to take over the development of the site.

The physically smallest, yet emotionally deepest aspect of the overall Avtex project is embodied in the Shenandoah Center For Heritage and the Environment, which will tell the winding, sometimes glorious, sometimes heartbreaking story of the plant through an interpretive site.  It is undecided at this point where the site will be located.

Ed Thorsett, curator for the Shenandoah Center of Heritage and the Environment, recently detailed the state of the some 22,000 cubic feet of material recovered from the site before most of the buildings were demolished.  He and others are currently taking an inventory of the vast collection of documents, furniture, personal effects, and other items currently stored in the nearby Old Virginia building.  An agreement between the EDA and the Center calls for 40 percent of the material to be inventoried by early spring.

The majority of the processed material will be discarded, Thorsett told the Daily last month.  After completing the inventory process, the group will begin a lengthy endeavor of cataloging.

As for the powerhouse, no official announcement has been made by the Army Corps of Engineers as to when it will be torn down.  Carroll said that announcement may come in early May.