The Northern Virginia Daily

November 9, 2009

Sun set to shine at Avtex

By Chris Fordney

Twenty years ago this month, the stinking, rotting, smoking and leaking symbol of industrial decay and folly that was Avtex Fibers in Front Royal was finally forced to shut down, leaving behind a toxic mess that has taken all of that time and a projected $150 million to clean up -- with much of that cost borne by FMC Corp., a former owner of the plant.

Today the 500-acre site along the Shenandoah River has been amazingly transformed, with little visible trace of the hulking rayon plant. Now managed by the Front Royal-Warren County Industrial Development Authority, the land is shaping up as an environmental showcase, with preserved natural areas along the river and a budding eco-industrial park on its higher ground.

There's more to clean up, including contaminated groundwater, and there's been local grumbling about government foot-dragging, but things have come far enough that researchers reported this past spring that they've found salamanders and frogs, considered to be markers for a clean habitat, on part of the EPA Superfund site.

And then there's the solar farm project being proposed for 150 acres here, along with a manufacturing facility for solar racking systems in the nearby Old Virginia warehouse. Among the principals is Greg Horton, 45, owner of Arctic Air and Refrigeration in Front Royal.

The project is still evolving, and has become the latest in a series of tiresome squabbles between Front Royal and Warren County -- this time over who, omigod, actually let the public know something about what's going on with it. There's an unseemly preoccupation with secrecy among many public officials in this town. Guys, this is local government, not the CIA.

One hopes they can all get behind this project, because what could be a more positive development for Front Royal -- local man helps create new business that will employ up to 1,000 people (roughly the number who worked at Avtex when it closed), contribute to the town's eventual energy independence with a new source of power and identify the town with clean energy rather than environmental degradation.

And it would be a fitting replacement for Avtex, an unbelievable horror show with staggering levels of air and water pollution and hideous worker deaths (one man was sucked into a vat of acid).

But Avtex was also an important part of the town's history and its main employer for decades, and the rayon it produced helped win World War II and supply the nation's space program. Thousands of town residents worked there, and many artifacts survive, including records and items that were saved when the EDA moved into the plant's old administration building.

Organizers had hoped to open a small museum about Avtex in the EDA building by the 20-year anniversary, and even though they've missed that mark, it's still in the offing.

Records of the plant's local of the Textile Workers Union of America, which had its hall at today's Victoria's Restaurant, are stored at the Warren Heritage Society on Chester Street. Christina Wolf, a student at James Madison University, recently indexed the records as part of a project.

That will help preserve the story of Avtex when, some day, people will walk and bike along that stretch of the river and, thankfully, see no trace of it.