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

DATE: FRIDAY, June 16, 1995                   TAG: 9506160032
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CATHRYN MCCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CHEMICAL RECYCLER OUT OF BUSINESS

Quadrex Corp. auctioned off several distilling tanks and other equipment from its Floyd plant last week and has put the 81/2-acre site in the county's industrial park on the market, said company Chairman Vincent Schoemehl.

Quadrex filed for bankruptcy Feb. 17 in Delaware, where it is 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 propertyand a separate 15-acre parcel in Pine Creek.

Quadrex had planned to recycle antifreeze at the industrial park plant, but it 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., or B-REAL, a locally owned company that made grain alcohol as a fuel additive. When that market dried up, B-REAL moved into antifreeze recycling, but it 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, spokesmen said 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 decontamination facility. The residents 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 passed an ordinance that established some local oversight, but less than many of the environmental activists had hoped.

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