More News

A Gaithersburg company wanting to give back and keep workers busy while business is slow donated more than 400 hours to cleaning up a dam between Lake Lynette and Lake Helene, two manmade lakes in the Kentlands designed for stormwater management.

"We just feel that the city and the county have been big clients of ours and we're doing this on a gratis basis," said John Diamondidis, owner of Highway and Safety Services Inc. "Not only does it help the city but it also helps my men. During these times we have seen a slowdown."

A crew of 10 workers from his asphalt paving and environmental remediation company spent five days cleaning up the high-hazard dam. The Maryland Department of Environment ordered the City of Gaithersburg in August to clear brush off the dam following an annual inspection, said Don Boswell, who reviews stormwater management plans for the city.

"There is a small forest of bamboo trees...on the dam, and anything on the dam like that is not advisable," said Visty Dalal, a dam safety engineer with MDE. "The roots of the trees are hydrophilics and they form conduits or pipelines from the lake and basically it erodes the dam materials."

Highway and Safety Services has worked throughout Maryland, since his mother and uncle, Patricia Diamondidis and Tom Kallis, founded the company in 1987, Diamondidis said, but most of his work has been for Montgomery County, the Maryland National-Capital Planning Commission, the City of Rockville and the City of Gaithersburg.

The company recently put a riser into Lake Placid, another lake downstream, to help with stormwater management and volunteered to do the cleanup as a stewardship effort.

Gaithersburg Public Works Director James Arnoult called the effort a "win-win situation" and said the city is helping to keep Diamondidis' workers busy.

"We are doing the lawn maintenance, pulling weeds, cutting back trees. Just a general clean up around the pond areas," Diamondidis said. "In today's economic times, there's not really many places for our guys to go. I don't want my men to be saying: ‘Hey, how am I going to feed my family?' I want them to know they have a great place to work so we are creating as much work for them as we can afford."

The 22-year-old company, located in the Montgomery County Airpark, has approximately 100 fulltime employees. Most of have worked for him an average of seven to 10 years.

"We're just trying to keep everybody going until the new contracts come out," Diamondidis said.