Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 15, 1995                   TAG: 9506150024
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: FLOYD                                 LENGTH: Medium

RECYCLING COMPANY OUT OF BUSINESS IN FLOYD

Quadrex Corp. auctioned several distilling tanks and other equipment from its Floyd plant last week, and has put the 8.5-acre site in the county's industrial park on the market, said Vincent Schoemehl, chairman of the company.

Quadrex filed for bankruptcy on Feb. 17 in Delaware, where it incorporated. The company has sold equipment and property from its four other environmental remediation facilities - two in Florida, one in Ohio, and one in Tennessee.

All that's left now, Schoemehl said, is the Floyd County property, including a separate 15-acre parcel in Pine Creek.

Quadrex had planned to recycle anti-freeze at the industrial park plant, but never took in a single gallon, he said.

In 1991, the Gainesville, Fla.-based company bought the land and equipment from Bio-Regional Energy Associates, Ltd., a locally owned company that made grain alcohol as a fuel additive. When that market dried up, B-REAL moved into anti-freeze recycling, but eventually ran into financial problems.

Quadrex spent "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to buy the plant and remove about 350,000 gallons of chemical waste, according to company spokesmen at the time.

"It was a business purchase when Quadrex was expanding all its environmental business," Schoemehl said this week.

But a group of residents grew concerned about Quadrex's environmental record in Oak Ridge, Tenn., where the company had a nuclear de-contamination facility. The citizens demanded that the Board of Supervisors enact a tough solid waste ordinance that would grant the county broad authority to regulate and oversee facilities dealing in waste, including Quadrex.

After a 10-month struggle, the board finally passed an ordinance that established some local oversight, but less than many of the environmental activists had hoped for.

In July 1993, Quadrex made another business decision, Schoemehl said, this time to sell all its facilities. Later that year, the company changed management, and eventually filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors earlier this year.