It's a clean-up at Victor Mill

By Charles Sowell  

AUGUST 6, 2010 6:12 a.m. (0)

Work is  starting a long-anticipated cleanup of the old Victor Mill site in Greer.

About 100 residents of the old mill village turned out to hear Rep. Harold Mitchell and a host of local, state and federal officials talk about the cleanup start.

Mitchell’s company H. Mitchell Group, LLC, has been responsible for coordinating the cleanup.

For years residents have agitated for something to be done about the crumbling mill site after a previous contractor declared insolvency and pulled out on work salvaging parts of the old building in the late 1990s.

“The community has suffered enough,” said Glenn Breed, Spartanburg County administrator.

Breed said he’s been with the county for 12 years and for his entire career in Spartanburg he’s heard about the mill site’s problems.

Victor residents seemed chiefly concerned with rodents and the prospect of the varmints being stirred up by work at the site.

The rats are already there, health officials said, and in the end the community will live past the rat problem and inherit what is planned to be a thriving community near the heart of Greer.

Mitchell urged residents to take part in a cleanup day planned for Saturday to gather up potential hiding places for rats displaced when workers move onto the site to start the actual cleanup of the old mill.

The first phase of the work will center around a parking lot covered in debris across the street from the mill itself.

Waste Management, Inc., will provide dumpsters for volunteers to deposit yard and construction trash from outside of Victor Mill homes to keep from giving rodents and snakes new homes after their demolition-driven exodus starts.

Prohibited materials during the cleanup include hazardous liquids, paints, solvents, pesticides and petroleum products.

The dumpsters will be available from 7 a.m. until noon near the mill and at the old parking lot.

One reason for the long delay starting work at Victor lies in the complexity of the site itself.

Victor Mill operated as a manufacturing plant for almost a century and the site is littered with hazardous materials like asbestos, lead, petroleum products and PCBs, said Cindy Nolan of the Atlanta of the Environmental Protection Agency.

It is a Brownfields site that has been radically altered by demolition.

Noland and contractors with HEPACO and Concurrent Technologies will monitor air quality and other issues at the site during demolition to ensure the public’s safety.

The whole process is expected to last 150 days with work winding up around the New Year.