AlanKim | The Roanoke Times

Howard Spencer (left) and project manager Randall Bowling stand at the proposed fly ash fill site that will create commercial lots along U.S. 460 (to the right) in Narrows. In the background are vacation trailers at Riverview campground along the New River (to the left).

NARROWS -- Howard Spencer can't understand it.

The Giles County Board of Supervisors chairman says he's figured out a way to help a county business, create a new spot for industrial development, generate jobs and raise money for the county's vocational education programs -- and some people are complaining about it.

Those people -- they call themselves Concerned Citizens of Giles County -- aren't against jobs or education or local businesses. But they aren't sure it's a good idea to put 254,000 cubic yards of a material laced with heavy metals on the banks of the New River. The Giles County Partnership for Excellence, a nonprofit group that Spencer directs, is proposing that fly ash -- what's left over after coal has been burned -- be dumped on a site in the river's flood plain in Narrows.

"Anytime flood plain land is filled, we're concerned," said George Santucci, executive director of the National Committee for the New River. "To fill that flood plain with potentially toxic material -- we're concerned even more."

Giles County zoned the land now owned by the partnership for industrial use more than a decade ago. But nothing has been built there, next to the Riverview Campground, in part because it's in the flood plain, far below U.S. 460.

Spencer's plan is to use fly ash and bottom ash as fill material. He plans to raise about 7 acres beside the New River about 30 feet, to the same level as U.S. 460. The project is called Cumberland Park.

That much ash -- Virginia's Department of Environmental Quality calls it "CCB" -- would cover the space of about 40 Wal-Mart Supercenters a foot thick.

The ash will come from AEP's power plant at Glen Lyn. The plant burns about 2,000 tons of coal each day, according to AEP spokesman John Shepelwich. That produces about 200 tons of CCB daily.

The plant used to landfill the ash on the banks of the New River, near the power plant. Now the company wets the ash and sluices it to two ponds, where it's dried and then hauled off. Some goes to Roanoke Cement Co., where it's used in a variety of masonry products. Most of it goes to a former mine site near Charleston, W.Va.

That costs money. Generally, disposing of CCB costs about $20 per ton, Shepelwich said. Shipping it to West Virginia costs about $25 per ton. Putting the ash in Narrows would cut that cost to $18 per ton.

"Anytime we can lower those costs, it has a downward effect on the fuel factor," a cost that's passed onto consumers, Shepelwich said.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which decided in 2000 that the ash is not hazardous waste, calls compacting CCB for fill a "beneficial use."

It's been done in this area before -- in Glen Lyn and Vinton. But the regulations are a little tougher in this case because the site is in a flood plain, said Aziz Farahmand, waste program manager in the DEQ's Roanoke office. The fill has to be protected from the river, but no liner is required to keep the CCB from leaching out.

Despite the EPA's ruling, there have been cases of buried CCB filtering into ground water and contaminating wells with arsenic and other heavy metals. Spencer said that kind of thing won't happen here.

"If I thought that we were endangering the river, I would not do this," he said. "The difference between us and the good people who are opposed to it is we've got scientific data. We've got research that's extended almost two years."

The opponents have scientific data, too.

They've talked with Bill Hopkins, a Virginia Tech professor who's spent more than a decade studying the effect of CCB contamination on fish, birds and reptiles. And the effects can be bad, including shortened life spans, according to Hopkins' research.

Some opponents also have a problem with Spencer's involvement. He's chairman of the board of supervisors. He's Glen Lyn's town manager -- home of the AEP plant. He's also executive director of the Partnership for Excellence.

"Almost any direction you go ... there is Howard Spencer," said Doug Turner, a member of the citizens group who is running for the board of supervisors. "There's no way he can serve all the interests he represents in a fair and equitable manner."

Spencer disagreed.

"I'm on the board of supervisors. I'm one of five votes," he said. "I'm the town manager of Glen Lyn. I have no vote. I'm the executive director of the Giles County Partnership. I have no vote. Where's the conflict of interest?"

It's all about bringing jobs to Giles County, he said.

"I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars training young people to work somewhere else," Spencer said. "When I was growing up, everybody could go to work at Radford or Celanese. That's not the case anymore."

Since the land is zoned for industry and the ash is being used as fill and not put in a landfill, no public hearings were required. But the Concerned Citizens of Giles County want some kind of public discussion of the plan, so they organized a meeting for this evening at Giles County High School. They plan to have Hopkins and people like Santucci who are interested in the New River. They've invited representatives from AEP and DEQ and county government. It's unlikely they'll come.

They also invited Spencer. He said he won't go.

"No," Spencer said. "I've met with them so many times and I hear the same things."

They just don't believe what he tells them.

"I don't know how that I deal with somebody like that," Spencer said.