Warren County Report

Article date: January 11, 2008

What sort of feathers will the Royal Phoenix wear?

Potential uses, limitations on business and conservancy parks discussed

By: Roger Bianchini

What is going on at the Royal Phoenix site on Front Royal’s west side and what will eventually be allowed to go on there, and under what restrictions were the subjects of a mid-December meeting of stakeholders of the federal Superfund cleanup site.

What is going on is the continued cleanup of the grounds directed by the site’s only surviving former owner, FMC Corporation.  However, what precisely will be going on is still to be determined as local codes and federal and conservancy restrictions are reviewed by the involved parties in coming months.  Front Royal, EDA and county officials began that discussion at a Jan. 8 work session at Town Hall.

The parties in attendance at a Dec. 13 stakeholders meeting hosted by the Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development authority included representatives of the Town of Front Royal, Warren County, the U.S. Environmental Agency, the Lord Fairfax Soil & Water Conservation District, FMC Inc., Valley Conservation, and contractor Gannett Fleming.  The meeting was seen as a chance to reconnect and iron out communications and other issues surrounding potential site uses among the parties involved in the federally overseen environmental cleanup and locally driven economic redevelopment project.

That redevelopment includes an envisioned 160-acre business park with the potential to create 1,000 jobs and a 240-acre Conservancy Park for limited recreational uses along the bank of the South Fork of the Shenandoah River.

Thus far the only active redevelopment portions of the site are the original Administration Building off Kendrick lane and the 33-acre county SoccerPlex on the property’s south side off Kerfoot Avenue.

The EDA- anchored Admin Building houses several business tenants, including Middletown’s Wayside Theater during its home base renovations.  At the December stakeholders meeting it was noted that negotiations are currently under way to extend Wayside’s lease for three years as a satellite theater.  While it was pointed out the original lease with Wayside was done without notifications to all stakeholders, a violation of the conservancy covenants for the site, no one seemed anxious to invalidate that lease or interfere with its extension.    The point seemed raised only to illustrate the complexities of the processes surrounding redevelopment at what was one of the nation’s largest environmental disaster sites in the early 1990’s. As envisioned, the EPA views the site’s redevelopment as a model of federal, state and local governmental cooperation to resurrect Superfund sites to productive uses.

Cleanup

FMC Project Manager John Torrence briefed the meeting on the status of the cleanup funded by the federal government to the tune of $22 million.  Twenty-eight above ground structures have been leveled and removed.  Six sub-surface structures remain and will be removed along with ongoing sewer removal work this year, Torrence said.  Most of the structural demolition has occurred east of the railroad tracks splitting the property in two.  While Torrence said FMC plans to have the remaining underground structure removal completed in 2008, the EPA’s review of that work and consequent clearing of the property for new development could take longer.  At the December meeting EPA officials could give no precise timeline on that approval.

Clean but…

As the discussion on restrictions and potential contradictions in allowable uses by federal easements versus local ordinance proceeded, Town Councilman Stan Brooks asked, “Why are there restrictions [on uses] if it’s been cleaned?”

“It is clean but,” Lord Fairfax Soil & Water representative Lyle Schertz pointed out.

EPA representatives present by conference call elaborated.  Involved from the near onset of the cleanup, EPA’s Bonnie Gross said easement restrictions reduced the amount of future monitoring of the site the EPA must do and lessened the possibility of future litigation involving the property.

“There are some parts [of the property] that will never be clean,” Gross observed.

Torrence later explained that some contaminants have been enclosed underground on the property.  He said both FMC and EPA are committed to see those areas maintained in an environmentally sound manner.  All such enclosed contaminants are on the Conservancy Park side of the property, Torrence said.

“I believe what Mr. Brooks was referring to is the fact that some of our sulfate basins or the fly ash basins have landfill caps on the top of them and the waste is still in the ground…; So yes, there is [contaminated] material still present on site.  However, it does not pose a human health risk… because the landfill caps are over them.” Torrence said original and existing berms have been reinforced, adding, “The landfills that contain sulfate sludge have a geo-synthetic liner on top of them that is anchored into the ground with two feet or more dirt on top of them.  So they are protected from rainwater infiltration and prevent human beings from being able to touch the material.”

While the fly ash basins do not have the liners, the two-plus feet of compacted clay are considered adequate by the EPA to … insulate the material.  Torrence added that FMC is required to maintain the lined and unlined containment areas “in perpetuity.”  So, the containment areas will be constantly monitored and repaired as needed indefinitely.  Torrence offered a vivid visual analogy as to why the decision was made to contain some of the contaminants on site, rather than ship them away.

“The volume of material is so great that it would require thousands and thousands of trucks to transport this material … In other words, if we mucked up all the sulfate sludge we would gave a convoy I would roughly estimate that would stretch from Front Royal beyond St. Louis, Missouri bumper to bumper.  And the health and safety risk associated with all of those dump trucks passing through Main Street, U.S.A. outweighed the [dangers] of the landfill capping technique that was chosen as a remedy.”

Allowed/not allowed?

Another EPA representative, Marcia Preston-Everett, suggested those present concentrate discussion on what uses would be allowed at the site and why any restrictions on uses existed from a 1999 agreement on property covenants.  The 1999 covenants on uses to a large extent reflected town codes on zoning, Preston-Everett noted.  Whether some restricted uses simply reflected town zoning or actual health concerns was one area that needed to be determined, all agreed.

“A hundred years from now someone discussing property uses isn’t likely to know anything about the 1999 agreement,” Lord Fairfax soil & Water’s Schertz pointed out.   “It is a safeguard currently against litigation over the property changing hands.”

“What do you want to do that is prohibited?  It’s not a problem if you don’t want to do a prohibited activity,” another Lord Fairfax Soil & Water District representative, Lauck Walton, pointed out.

Schertz acknowledged potential tension between those investing in the site and those helping set restrictions without a financial commitment.  “We won’t plan game warden,” Schertz said of his stakeholder group, “but we want to avoid lawsuits against the Lord Fairfax Water & Soil conservation district.”

“I think the EDA has an idea of uses it wants at the site,” EPA's Preston-Everett stated.  In addition to commercial retail, traditional and technology office space, the EDA has suggested a hotel and conference center and the potential for a culinary school and Virginia wines and crafts center.

“Are restaurants allowed or not allowed – that kind of jumps out at you,” EPA reps observed of the apparent restriction of food businesses.  Initially it appears that restriction simply reflects town codes on light industrial uses.

Two uses there seemed a consensus would remain prohibited at the site were residential development and long term health care.  County attorney Blair Mitchell and Front Royal Assistant Town manager for Planning Nimet Soliman agreed that a viable first step would be for the EDA and town officials to sit down to review potential and desired uses and any conflict with existing town zoning codes.

 Stakeholder perspective

 Following the meeting, Valley conservation representative John Eckman said.  “We think the meeting was really quite productive.  There are a lot of new players on board who need to hear the background information and the details.”

Valley conservation is a regional land trust, Eckman explained.  “We’re one of the holders of the conservation easement, which is intended to perpetually enforce certain restrictions on the land for public health and conservation reasons.  The restrictions are different on different parts of the site and that might cause some perception that things are more restrictive than they really are.  But there are specific prohibitions on certain things, even on this part of the site than can be developed.”

Eckman said he trusts the EPA and FMC to develop viable containment strategies for any remaining contaminants.  “That’s their responsibility.  But there are specific responsibilities that we have along with the Lord Fairfax District as far as the terms of the easement itself—what can be done, what can be built on top of the land.”

As the target dates for release of larger segments of the Royal Phoenix site approach over the next two years, reaching and informed consensus on allowable uses and restrictions becomes crucial for the property to be successfully marketed – and for the site to become more that just a fenced off footnote to the community and the worlds history.

 A piece of history

The former rayon and synthetic fiber manufacturing pant opened in 1940 as American Viscose.  American Viscose, a branch of a British manufacturing firm, built the plant in the relatively safe environs of the Shenandoah Valley as World War II loomed in Europe.  Despite its location across the Atlantic and nestled inland in the rolling hills of Virginia, many of the plant’s buildings were constructed several layers thick to withstand possible bombing attacks.  Covering a sprawling 467-acres primarily east of the South Fork of the Shenandoah River in Front Royal, the plant contributed heavily to the Allied war effort of the 1940’s including the production of rubber for tires, nylon for parachutes and other war-related materials.  At its peak the world’s largest producer or rayon and the community’s primary economic engine employed approximately 2,500 people.

The plant was owned by FMC for three years in the mid-1960’s before being sold to its final owner, Avtex Fibers.  Despite the impacts of a changing marketplace and its ongoing pollution issues, in the late1980’s the pant was kept open largely through federal government contracts.  Those contracts reflected on of the plant’s final roles as sole provider of some materials necessary for the U.S. Space Shuttle program.

In 1989, its operations already pared back to a maintenance level, the plant finally closed by the state DEQ and Virginia Attorney General Mary Sue Terry due to ongoing violations of state water control standards.  It was an inglorious end to a facility the once helped make the work “safe for democracy”— even if for half a century its operations gave Front Royal, especially the north side, its distinctive rotten egg odor.

But odor free, the Royal Phoenix stands poised to rise from its toxic “ashes” to help propel its community toward a new era of “green” technologies and employment opportunities as the 21^st Century dawns with hope, rather than regret.