Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 20, 1994 TAG: 9410200091
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MONTVALE LENGTH: Medium
There was one possible drawback. Shredded Products, a car recycling plant, sat right down the hill, only a few hundred yards away. A Montvale resident, she remembered the infamous "fluff fire" that had burned for more than a month in 1989, sending acrid smoke over the valley.
But the company had announced plans to move soon to Franklin County. Meador, her husband and parents would have the place all to themselves.
The family looked at the property on a Sunday - a day off for the plant - and bought it that night, she said.
The plant is still there, still shredding car seats, dashboards and other "fluff" from cars to save the scrap metal for its parent company, Roanoke Electric Steel.
The process creates a sooty smoke that sometimes drifts up the hill. It's worse in the morning fog and sometimes obscures the view of the distant mountains, Meador said.
"It leaves little black specks on the porch. Our house looks terrible but we're not going to do anything until they move," she said.
If all goes well, moving day will be Nov. 15, said Daniel Board, vice president for purchasing at Roanoke Electric Steel.
The company bought a 439-acre farm in Franklin County to relocate its plant and build a fluff landfill that meets all state requirements.
It got a landfill permit for the new site a year ago April, but bad weather delayed construction, Board said. Now the company is finishing the building, and trying to nail down a backup treatment for its leachate - the moisture that seeps out of a landfill.
Board said the leachate will be collected and recycled for use in the shredding process.
The state Department of Environmental Quality must approve a backup entity to take the leachate, in case something happens that prevents the plant from using it, said Don Brunson, an environmental engineer with the agency in Richmond.
The company has installed a double layer of impermeable plastic to line the landfill, and will cover with soil up to 50 tons of fluff it will dump there every day. Both measures go beyond state requirements for fluff, which is a nonhazardous waste, Brunson said.
"They did it totally on their own accord," he said. "It's the kind of system of built-in fire walls to give extra protection against that happening again."
The fire started five years ago today, after Shredded Products, against state law, began stockpiling fluff up to 20 feet high over an area the size of a football field. For years, Shredded Prodcuts had dumped the fluff in a pit on the property.
The company was fined $15,000 and ordered to remove the ash, and cover and seed the site. Brunson said the company met all conditions of the consent order, and paid the fine.
Since the fire, Shredded Products has been hauling the fluff to a private landfill in Pittsylvania County, Board said.
Almost all the employees, between 25 and 30, probably will work at the new plant, he said. The Montvale site will stay open for people to drop off scrap, but no longer will shred the products.
The state apparently will not monitor the old dump because it never had a permit, said Norman Auldridge, with the Roanoke region of the Department of Environmental Quality. Virginia did not require ground-water monitoring wells at the time of the consent order.
by CNB