ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, July 5, 1996 TAG: 9607050093
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: YORKTOWN (AP)
SOURCE: MATHEW PAUST (NEWPORT NEWS) DAILY PRESS
WHEN THE NAVY needed to dump several loads of plastic foam, a children's home answered the call. But who helped whom more is another issue.
The Navy has made a small corner of Gloucester County into the fire-retardant plastic foam capital of the Peninsula, the Middle Peninsula and perhaps beyond.
Ten tractor-trailer loads of the stuff have been hauled from the Naval Weapons Station at Yorktown to Hopesville Children's Home.
It's a scenario that suggests an obvious question: For goodness sakes, why?
The answer comes from Allen Simmons, weapons station recycling program manager. Getting rid of the foam has been his second-biggest challenge since taking the job about a year ago.
The Navy had purchased the foam for a packing project, but the project was dropped. ``I called the National Styrofoam Council, and they gave me a manufacturer in Pennsylvania. I called the company, and they said they'd buy it,'' Simmons said.
But there was a catch. The company would pay no more than 2 cents a pound, and the Navy had to deliver it. Not a good deal, Simmons decided.
He then found a company in Chesapeake that would take the stuff off his hands but wouldn't pay a cent for it.
Then another environmentalist at the station, Randy Sawyer, told Simmons about the school. It was a nonprofit outfit, making it eligible for the Navy to give it the stuff free.
``It was a win-win situation for the Navy. We didn't have to worry about taking it to a landfill. That's my goal - anything but the landfill. And we could help out somebody in the community who's doing good,'' Simmons said.
Sawyer is a neighbor of Hopesville Children's Home, said Sheila Boettcher, the school's executive director. He knew the school was looking for ways to raise funds.
Boettcher said some of the foam is being used to make partitions in the school's activities center, and some is being used as acoustical tile for recording studios a Mathews musician is renting from the school. And they're selling some for about $4 a sheet. Simmons said the sheets are 8 feet long, 16 inches wide and 3 inches thick. The rest, Boettcher said, is being stored in buildings and under tarps in a nearby field.
Hopesville Children's Home grew out of Hopesville Boys Ranch, which Boettcher's parents, Frank and Ruth Seal, started in 1968. Frank Seal is a retired United Methodist minister. The school is now licensed by the state as a residential school for ``abused, abandoned, neglected and orphaned children,'' ages 4 to 18, she said.
Boettcher said the school boards four teen-age students, with another five attending classes. They come from the Peninsula, Ashland, King and Queen County and King William County.
Simmons, meanwhile, is waiting for his next recycling challenge - something perhaps as difficult as finding a good home for the plastic foam, or even harder than his toughest job to date: finding a home for 80,000 pounds of plastic lens-grinding dust.
The weapons station makes eyeglasses for the Navy's entire East Coast fleet. Simmons eventually did find a buyer for the dust, keeping it out of the landfill.
``Every day in this job has a challenge,'' he said.
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Hopeville Ministry Children's Home residentby CNBChristina bends down to catch a frog in a huge pile of plastic foam
donated by the Navy, while other residents and sailors watch.