Article date: November 16, 1999

Front Royal officials got a close look Monday at the cleanup project at the former Avtex Fibers rayon plant.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is overseeing a $63 million, court ordered cleanup of the Kendrick Lane plant by its former owner, FMC Corp. The cleanup will clear the way for the Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Authority to develop the 500-acre site into a business park and outdoor recreation area.

Agency spokeswoman Bonnie Gross said the visit let town officials who missed a tour earlier this month get a better idea of the property’s size and the project’s scope.

"It’s sometimes much easier to understand something when you can see first hand," she said.

The tour focused on a 125-acre section of the property along the South Fork of the Shenandoah River. The section is home to several open wastewater, fly ash and sulfate basins and a 75 foot pile of fly ash. The authority plans to develop it into a recreation and conservation area.

Agency spokesman Richard R. Kuhn led Town Manager Richard A. Anzolut Jr., Vice Mayor Tony Carter and Planning Director Kimberly P. Fogle to the top of "Fly Ash Mountain," from which they could overlook the basins and the property along the river.

FMC is draining and covering five of the basins and grading the pile of fly ash with soil, reducing its height by more than half, Kuhn said.

Anzolut said it was his first trip onto the plant’s grounds.

"It’s hard to visualize all of this acreage when you see it on paper, but when you actually stand up here and see it for real, it’s really quite thrilling," he said. "It’s thrilling that the town has this great resource right in its backyard."

Ms. Gross said FMC plans to begin dredging the basins, the deepest of which has 22 feet of water and five to six feet of sulfate sludge at its bottom, in the sping. The dredging will take about two years, she said.

Kuhn said many animals, including ducks, carp and turtles, live in the basins. Although the contaminants in the pond-like basins can be hazardous, the animals treat them like any other body of water, he said.

"We don’t know how dangerous it really is for them," he said. "It’s definitely not the safest habitat, but it supports a number of ecosystems."

FMC is cataloging the plant and animal life on the Avtex site so the populations can be maintained during the redevelopment, which will last about 10 years, Kuhn said. In the end, Avtex should be safe for plants, animals and humans, he said.

The Avtex plant, which opened in 1940, was condemned in 1986 under the federal Superfund program for environmental disaster areas. The facility has been abandoned since 1989, when Avtex Fibers Inc. stopped producing rayon and filed for bankruptcy, putting more that 500 area residents out of work.