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By MARY K. BLEWITT
and ROGER BIANCHINI
Arundel Newspapers Staff Writers
FRONT ROYAL — At this time last year Avtex Fibers of Front Royal was entangled in a string of environmental violations that eventually led to its closing.
The plant, once the sole supplier of carbonized rayon for NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense, was forced to shut down on Nov. 10, 1989, after the Virginia Water Control Board revoked its water discharge license.
The company then received a $6 million fine for polluting the Shenandoah River with cancer-linked polychlorinated byphenyls (PCBs). The environmental fine was the largest ever handed down by a Virginia court.
Now, one year later, the Environmental Protection Agency has removed the last of 370 tons of hazardous and potentially explosive carbon disulfide from the Superfund site. As the EPA released the next phase of clean-up this month, the cost of clean-up neared $9 million, only a portion of the anticipated cost.
The dilapidated Avtex plant has been gradually dismantled. Tanks that once contained the carbon disulfide were ripped apart by huge mechanical shears last week. The tank remains may eventually be sold as scrap metal or dumped at an approved landfill site.
The company itself lies in the midst of a bankruptsy case filed in February, claiming more than $60 million in debt.
The U.S. Bankruptsy Court in Reading, Pa., has approved the first sale of equipment from the Front Royal plant site as part of the Chapter 11 action taken by Avtex Fibers Inc.
The court approved the sale of several hundred beams and large spinning wheels to Equipments Marketing Services Inc. (EMS) of Dalton, Ga., and the sale of two double-deck yarn spinning machines to Zarroli and Associates of Naples, Fla.
Bankruptcy court trustee Anthony H. Murray Jr., in charge of the disbursement of assets to help recoup part of the debt owed to creditors by Avtex, said he hopes to be able to sell as much of the assets as possible before they are turned into scrap metal.
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