Allied Technology Group has made good on most of its bounced paychecks this week as the company looks for ways to fix its financial troubles.

On Monday, ATG received $1 million from one of its creditor banks so it could take care of bounced final paychecks that terminated employees received last week.

ATG was supposed to get that $1 million several days ago when it wrote the paychecks, but the money was not sent to ATG until Monday, said Vik Mani, executive adviser to company President Doreen Chiu.

"The company is concentrating on its obligations to pay employees because we want them to come back" if the Richland site is revived, Mani said.

Debbie Hendrick, business representative for Operating Engineers Local No. 280s, confirmed Tuesday that ATG made good on its bounced final paychecks.

But she added some paychecks issued Nov. 9 had also bounced, and ATG still owes money on those.

Local No. 280 represents 87 of about 120 ATG employees laid off Nov. 19, when ATG's creditors froze the company's cash, forcing it to shut down plants in Richland and Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Mani said ATG is seriously considering filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which would allow the company to restructure itself and its debts to try to stay afloat.

"The company will slowly get back to its feet and will pay its debts to its creditors," he said.

In the meantime, ATG's creditor banks are pushing for a receiver -- an outside party -- to run ATG under the federal bankruptcy court's supervision. Company officials believe they have a good start on fixing its problems, so a receiver is not needed.

If ATG does go into receivership, the state wants assurances that whoever takes over operations is qualified to work with low-level radioactive and chemical wastes

The Richland site has at least 300 tons of low-level radioactive wastes. The amount of chemical wastes at the site was unavailable Tuesday. The state plans to soon inspect those wastes.

ATG wants to restart its Richland and Oak Ridge plants. If everything goes ATG's way, Mani speculated the company might start rehiring within three weeks, with the Richland plant returning to full speed by late January.

Formal testing of a new mixed waste glassification facility -- originally set for November 2000 -- would likely occur in the first three months of 2002, he said.

ATG's business is to take hazardous and radioactive wastes -- and crunch, filter, glassify or incinerate them into safer forms and smaller volumes.

ATG borrowed heavily from a group of banks to pay for acquisitions and to develop new technology. But it could not make its scheduled repayments.

Now, ATG owes those banks more than $23 million, of which $9 million is far overdue. ATG also owes Tri-City and regional contractors an additional $2.8 million for unpaid work on the new glassification facility.

One of ATG's creditors went to the lending banks in a legal move to get its money. That triggered the banks freezing ATG's cash to Friday afternoon.

Mani declined to identify the creditor. "There's no question that ATG owed money to the company. There's no question it ran out of patience," he said.

He said the company already had turned a corner and was beginning to make a profit -- if the huge debt payments were not included in the accounting -- when its cash was frozen.