The Northern Virginia Daily

Article date: May 01, 2007 

Cleaning Up

Former Avtex rayon plant to be destroyed by end of summer

 By: Robert King

The buildings that made up the former Avtex rayon plant may be completely destroyed by the end of the summer as cleanup efforts at the Superfund site continue.

The plant, located in Warren County, was classified as a Superfund site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1986, and the cleanup process is progressing, officials say.

Once completed, an industrial park and conservancy area will dominate the 440-acre site.

The plant produced rayon and other synthetics from 1940-1989.

Although Avtex Fibers owned the plant when it was shut down, FMC Corp., which operated it from 1973 to 1976, took over cleanup duties and started funding the project in 1999, according to EPA documents.

Two major cleanup efforts are going on at the site.  The first is scheduled to be complete by the end of August, as the Army corps of Engineers is nearly finished with the demolition of the former plant’s buildings.

“The Army Corps of Engineers was responsible to remove the asbestos and demolish the buildings once [the] asbestos gone,” said John G. Torrence, the site manager for Environmental Resources Management, an environmental contractor hired by FMC.

Once the buildings are gone, FMC can see if there is any need to clean the soil, Torrence said.

The second part of the cleanup focuses on 240 acres of basins and landfills near the South Fork of the Shenandoah River.  Waste disposal practices at the site contributed to the contamination of the river, according to an EPA description of the site.

“Tons of rayon manufacturing wastes and by-products, zinc hydroxide sludge, fly ash and boiler room solids were disposed on-site,” the description reads.  Some basins also contain viscose, an organic liquid used to make rayon.

All of the basins and landfills will be capped, although the content of that cap varies with the type of contaminant.

“It’s a multi-layer cap that has soil and a liner,” said Bonnie Gross, the project manager for the EPA.

The zinc sulfate basins will have “a geo synthetic liner [and] really thick plastic,” Torrence said.  “We put that down first, then the second we put 2 feet of clay cover on top of that.”

Viscose basins will have a similar liner with 2 feet of soil cover and clay cover on top of that, he added.

Torrence estimates that all the basins and landfills will be capped around 2012. The 240-acre area will become the conservancy park and open space area.

“FMC is concentrating their efforts to finish capping the basins near the 160-acre industrial park in an effort to free up parcels for re-development, Torrence said.

The Front Royal/Warren County Economic Development Authority is in charge of the re-development.  It can’t do anything until the EPA declassifies it as a Superfund site, said Paul Carroll, the executive director of the EDA.

“What we can do is [develop] on parcels of land the EPA expresses no further interest in,” Carroll said.

The EPA has already released 33 acres on the site.  The entire park, called Royal Phoenix, would be available for development by 2009-2010, Carroll estimates.

The EDA is in talks with developers and investors who are interested in obtaining tn option to purchase the entire industrial park, Carroll added.

If an investor or developer acquires the property, they wouldn’t have to make payments until the EPA expresses no further interest in the land, he said.

Part of the redevelopment has already begun, The Skyline Soccerplex, a batch of soccer fields located on 30 acres, opened in September.

Wayside Theatre also will perform its next season at a facility at Royal Phoenix while its Middletown theater undergoes renovations.

Torrence said the site “should be a tremendous success story when we are compete”.