Article date: March 08, 2001

Site manager says number will grow as construction, other efforts intensify

By Ashley May

As spring dawns on the Avtex Fibers Superfund site, deconstruction and cleanup efforts are getting in gear for a summer of intense activity that could involve as many as 200 people, according to the project’s coordinator.

Doug Bement, who is also the site manager for FMC Corp., a former owner and the major private party responsible for the environmental remediation, said Wednesday that the cleanup workforce will soon quadruple.

Bement said contractors hired by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are scheduled to finish the final phase of asbestos removal from the plant’s administrative building and other portions of the 500- acre site in about two weeks. This week, he estimated the total labor force assigned to various projects at about 45 people, but said that numbers will grow as construction and decontamination efforts intensify.

"At the peak of the summer I expect for there to be as many as 200 people," he said.

Because those workers will need to eat and sleep in Front Royal for their term at Avtex, " there will be all kinds of economic ripples about that," he said.

"We will certainly be employing as much of the local labor force as we can find trained personnel, he said.

The work is specialized and requires a minimum of 40 hours of certification in hazardous waste operations training, so those hired to assist with the basin closures and site remediation must have that training, Bement said.

In addition to the employees currently working on-site, Bement expects that number to grow to 75, to 100 by the beginning of April, and to 100-125 in June and July. Army Corps contractors will make up another 60 workers, he said.

The abatement work, during which several waste product basins on the plant site will be cleaned and capped, will continue at least through October, he said.

Crews hired by FMC have already hauled away more that 130 tons of debris as part of the multimillion dollar cleanup effort for the former viscose plant. About 80,000 tons of construction and demolition debris have been removed from plant buildings, and the underlying soils have been excavated since phase one remediation efforts began two years ago, Rick Goss of Decision Quest, hired to manage the effort for FMC, has said.

So far, about five tons of hazardous waste, including residual sludge from plant operations and materials already sealed in drums by the EPA, have also been moved to an approved waste station in Model City, N.Y., Goss said.

Also in the first phase effort, 16 of the plant’s industrial transformers are to be decommissioned by the Safety Kleen company in Twinsburg, Ohio, and about 10,000 tons of steel have been recycled as well, Goss said.

At Avtex, 35,000 tons of brick, concrete and soil have been recycled on the plant site to fill building foundations and place temporary roads and equipment paths in fly ash basins, which will eventually be capped, Goss said.

Because of the pollution from plant operations, the Avtex plant was designated a federal Superfund site by the EPA in 1986, and in 1999 was named as one of the pilot sites in the EPA’s Superfund redevelopment initiative.

Avtex, a former rayon manufacturing facility, was first operated by the American Viscose Company from 1940 to 1963, and then by FMC Corporation from 1963 to 1976. Avtex Fibers operated from 1976 to 1989, when the plant was closed for financial, environmental and safety reasons.