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For the past several months, the state and local press has been filled with charges and countercharges about the Avtex Fibers plant in Front Royal.
Last week, the issue made ABC’s Nightline program, where experts again debated the issues familiar to Warren County residents and their neighbors before a national television audience. Nothing was settled there, either.
How much longer do we have to wait? The company promises, once again, that it is working .'to curb airborne emissions from the plant. Those Remissions, primarily of sulfur dioxide, earned the plant the EPA’s designation as the second-worst air polluter in the nation — and makes Front Royal easily the stinkiest town this side of Southern Virginia’s pulp mills. J _ Several years ago, a state occupational Health and safety inspection turned up more than T,000 violations. Several workers have been killed ih recent years. Photos taken inside the plant and shown on last week’s telecast look more like bombed-out Beruit, Lebanon than a producing industrial plant.
The company, through its CEO John Gregg and various spokesmen, cries poverty. The company says that it cannot afford the investment necessary to bring the plant into compliance. Read that as an implied threat to the state’s regulators and politicians: Force us to spend the money, and we’ll shut down, leaving you to face the angry employees who now have no jobs.
If you don’t believe me, remember last fall?
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