VISITORS FROM EURASIA TOUR CONCORD PLANT IN SEARCH OF NEW IDEAS, TECHNOLOGIES
By Leo Strupczewski newsroom@delcotimes.com

The Delaware County Times, PA
July 6 2006

CONCORD — Five visitors had broken from the tour and joined an
impromptu business meeting. Twenty visitors from Armenia, Moldova,
Georgia and Ukraine toured the Concord Sewage Treatment Plant
Wednesday. The tour was part of an U.S. Department of Commerce program
for mid- and senior-level water resource management and maintenance
engineers and executives from Eurasia.

While Tom Chew, the facility’s managing director, directed the tour,
Karapet Ohanyan was talking with Peter Snow, the training manager
for Godwin Pumps.

It couldn’t have worked out any better for Ohanyan, from Yerevan,
Armenia. He needed a portable water pump, but didn’t want to buy them.

No one in Armenia rents them, Ohanyan said. The same also goes for
Ukraine and Georgia.

"It would be good for both sides if you did rent there," Ohanyan said
through an interpreter.

Snow, an Aston resident, smiled and pulled Godwin’s national sales
manager Joseph Abbott Jr. into the group.

"The idea is to bring them in, expose them to our technologies,"
Abbott said of the program, called the Special American Business
Internship Training Program. "Maybe stimulate some sort of business
relationships."

No deal was settled on the spot, but the program was a success.

The 20 visitors have been in the country for four weeks. They’ve
toured facilities throughout the Mid-Atlantic states and met with
manufacturers, along with local, federal government officials and
water treatment plant officials.

They visited Concord because it’s a smaller plant, Abbott said. It’s
also state-of-the-art and clean.

"They run a nice operation," he said. "I wish they all looked like
this."

For the facility, hosting a similar program six years ago probably
would not have been possible.

"It would have been difficult at best," Chew said. "There just wasn’t
any personnel."

Or space.

Chew said the facility has experienced tremendous growth since 2000.

At the time, there was only one full-time pump operator and two other
part-time employees.

Now, there are six full-time employees and a new garage with office
space. The facility will also break ground on a new pump in August.

All of it is attributed to the population growth in the area. The
facility’s main customer is the Delaware County Prison, but also
serves roughly 2,000 households.

"It’s sort of a chicken and the egg scenario," Chew said. "Concord
could’ve never grown at the rate it did without the facility."

But for Ohanyan and the other visitors, the tour was about picking
up some advice and making contacts.

"At the minimum, I will let people know what I’ve learned," Ohanyan
said. "Everyone here has had lots of patience and interest with us."