A visit to Weston Solutions in West Chester

Last week, I had the opportunity to visit the headquarters of Weston Solutions in West Chester. Weston was founded in 1957 and originally worked in standard wastewater treatment. Weston reinvented itself in the late 1970’s as it grew and began to take on federal contracts for redevelopment, removal of discarded military munitions and environmental engineering and construction. Today, Weston Solutions is an industry-leader in environmentally-friendly construction and sustainable property development.

Weston Solutions has been involved with numerous high-profile, technically demanding engineering jobs. Weston was instrumental in the renovation of Umm Qasr, Iraq’s leading port city. The work Weston did in Umm Qasr, which included building construction, construction of electrical, water and sanitary sewerage systems, and dredging, helped get the port back up and running and immediately provided secure jobs to Iraqi civilians. Nationally, Weston has played a role in disasters such as the recovery of the Space Shuttle Columbia, and anthrax contamination at postal facilities. Locally, Weston was also involved in the removal of military munitions along the beach in Surf City, New Jersey.

Weston also deployed over 600 employees to the gulf coast region in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Shortly thereafter, Weston was called on to build temporary pumping stations in New Orleans which provided the city the flood control capacity it badly needed. These pumping stations remain in place today. To get a sense of the scope of the engineering challenge involved, when all the stations are running concurrently the water flow rate is greater than the flow rate of the Delaware River.

Weston is currently working on a major initiative with the City of Chester that I referenced in a recent statement on energy sustainability.

I spoke at length with both Weston’s management team and its rank-and-file employees. The concerns I heard from many Weston employees were the same concerns I hear across the District: stagnating unemployment and alarm over our rapidly ballooning debt.

Unemployment is an issue that touches everyone in this District, and everywhere I go I meet people who have either a friend or relative unable to find work. I’ve put forward a series of detailed proposals for job creation, which can be foundhere, and I believe that these policies will ease our unemployment and create economic conditions conducive for job creation. Our exponentially-increasing national debt is also an issue I’ve written about extensively, and I believe that our trillions of dollars of debt represent the single greatest threat to America’s future.

Two other issues, in particular, were touched on during my visit. As a company involved with environmental cleanup and sustainable development, the natural gas deposits in the Marcellus Shale are of obvious interest to Weston. In Weston’s view, the Marcellus Shale is a viable bridge between Pennsylvania’s fossil fuels like coal and the transition to clean, renewable energy. The Marcellus Shale contains as much as one trillion dollars worth of natural gas, enough to satisfy America’s demand for almost two years. These natural gas deposits are an enormous resource for Pennsylvania, and companies like Weston are vital to ensuring that the development and extraction of the Shale is done in an environmentally sustainable way.

Another concern brought to my attention by Weston employees was an issue that arises in the granting of federal contracts to small business. Federal agencies are required to ensure a certain proportion of contracts go to small businesses. What actually ends up occurring, however, is frequently something far different. Instead of federal contracts going to real small businesses that create real jobs for these businesses, the work is awarded to what are essentially front companies that then subcontract out the jobs to major corporations.

The concern that Weston employees expressed to me was simple: if an agency contracted a “small businesses” to do a job which it then immediately subcontracted to a large corporation, the agency is counted as giving a contract to a small business. But if the same agency were to award a contract to a large business that then subcontracted parts of it out to real, genuine small businesses, then the agency would not receive credit toward its small business goals. As a Congressman, I will work to reform the federal contracting process to ensure that federal contracts are going to true small businesses.