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By VAL VAN METER
Anindel Newspapers Staff Writer
FRONT ROYAL — Persistence and perserverance have paid off in one citizen’s fight to see the owners of Avtex pay a price for polluting the Shenandoah River.
Pat Lewis, who heads the Avtex Task Force of the Commonwealth Coalition, has spent the past year writing letters to elected officials and heads of government agencies, insisting the owner-operators of Avtex be debarred from further federal contracts.
Last week, her efforts bore fruit, as the Environmental Protection Agency opened an investigation.
That investigation could have repercussions in Front Royal, where two former Avtex executives are attempting to start a new business in a part of the old rayon-producing plant.
The plant was closed last November after the Virginia Water Control Board revoked its waste discharge permit. Avtex proved to be the source of cancer-causing polychlorinated byphenyls that have polluted the Shenandoah.
David Tousignant and James E. Crutchfield propose to produce polypropylene at Avtex. Lewis says the two men, as managers of Avtex, carry responsiblity for the plant’s at least five-year record of polluting the Shenandoah, as well as groundwater supplies in Warren County.
Avtex had federal contracts, including a $39.9 million bailout from the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Under federal procurement policies, all contractors must adhere to federal regulations, including the Clean Air and Clean Water acts.
Contractors who knowingly violate those regulations can be debarred from ever getting federal contract work. Lewis wants Tousignant, Crutchfield and all Avtex management officals so barred.
Lewis said testimony at a state court hearing on Avtex’s water discharge permit revealed the company had spent $6 million in 1989 on polypropylene development.
“Now two members of the company, calling themselves Shenan
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