Press Releases

WESTON/DaimlerChrysler Team Receives Environmental Excellence Award

West Chester, Pa. - March 20, 2000 - Roy F. Weston, Inc., a leading infrastructure redevelopment firm, today announced that the WESTON/DaimlerChrysler Phytoremediation Project Team has received DaimlerChrysler's 1999 Continuously Honors Environmental Excellence with Recognition (CHEER) award.

The award recognizes the Team's innovative use of sunflowers and mustard plants, planted in a giant flower bed, to remove lead contamination from soil at the former Detroit Forge/Winfield Foundry site, saving DaimlerChrysler more than $1 million in disposal costs. The team was one of seven finalists selected from 98 award nominations worldwide and the only team to receive an environmental remediation award.

"This is an honor for us," said William L. Robertson, WESTON's chief executive officer. "The work we are doing as DaimlerChrysler's remediation partner is part of a shared mission to investigate and use technologies that achieve less costly but permanent results."

WESTON recommended phytoremediation after completing an environmental site assessment that identified high levels of lead in one area of the site. Sunflowers and mustard plants were selected because of their ability to uptake lead from the soil through their root systems and store it in the plant leaves. After one growing season, the plants were harvested, dried and disposed of off-site.

Mike Curry, DaimlerChrysler's project manager for Detroit Forge, stated "This project was a big success for us, because not only did we remediate the impacted area, we also did it in an environmentally friendly way that avoided landfilling and its associated liability."

WESTON is a leading infrastructure redevelopment services firm serving industry and government worldwide. With an emphasis on creating lasting economic solutions for its clients, the company's services include redevelopment, infrastructure operations, site remediation and knowledge management to bring impaired facilities, land and other resources back to productive use.

Based in West Chester, Pennsylvania, WESTON provides services through a network of 60 offices throughout the United States, including three in the State of Michigan, and international operations in Europe, Latin America, and Asia.