Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This is Joe Moad, the General Manager at Eastern Municipal Water District and you are listening to the Water Values Podcast.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: The Water Values Podcast is sponsored by the following market leading companies and organizations by Entera Innovation and Stewardship for a Sustainable Tomorrow by Xylem Let's Solve Water by the American Waterworks Association Dedicated to the World's Most Important Resource by Black and Veatch Building a World of Difference by Advanced Drainage Systems Our Reason is water by 1898 & Co. Possibilities Powered by Experience and by Woodard and Curran High Quality Consulting, Engineering Science and Operations Services.
This is session 283.
Welcome to the Water Values.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: Podcast. This is the podcast dedicated to water utilities, resources, treatment, reuse and all things.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Water. Now here's your host, Dave McGimpsey.
Well, hello and welcome to another session of the Water Values Podcast. As my daughter Sarah said, my name is Dave McGimpsey and thank you for joining me. Happy New Year and thank you for your support over the last nearly 12 years. Now we've got a terrific show for you. To start off 2026, Water's chairman and CEO Kevin Gast joins us for a terrific discussion about WATRS technology. And note, when I say WATR, the company spells its name with two V's in place of the W, so you might say it like Vader. But regardless, Kevin does a phenomenal job explaining the decentralized treatment technology his company offers. And you're really going to learn a lot. This is an exciting technology.
And for our Bluefield on Tap segment, Rhys Tisdale kicks off 2026 with his top 10 list of water sector issues to be on the lookout for in the coming year.
And today's lead guest, Kevin, might just fit very nicely within Reese's top 10 issues.
But before we get on to today's conversations, we always say thank you to our fantastic sponsors at the top of every show. The Water Values Podcast and is sponsored by Entera Xylem, the American Waterworks Association, Black and Veatch Advanced Drainage Systems 1898 & Co and by Woodard and Curran. And that, my friends, is a terrific collection of impactful companies that have affirmatively decided to support water industry thought leadership and education. And I thank you all and I'd like you, the listener, to please do me a favor. If you work for or with any of the sponsors, please thank your boss or thank your contact at the sponsor firm and let them know that you appreciate their leadership in the industry through the sponsorship. You'd be surprised how far a simple little note of thanks will go.
And as long as you're letting the sponsors know you appreciate their support of water industry education and thought leadership, why not leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or whatever other podcast directory you're listening to the podcast on? It'd be greatly appreciated and of course, helps others find out about the podcast. And also, please don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss a single episode. Thanks so much.
Well, before we head on to the interview with Kevin, we've got a Bluefield on Tap segment with Bluefield Research's Reece Tisdale. So take it away, guys.
Rhys, welcome to 2026 and another Bluefield on Tap. How we doing this month? This year? How are we doing.
[00:03:27] Speaker C: This year? Well, since we're just kicking off part of this episode, life couldn't be better. It's all upside. Isn't that what they say.
[00:03:35] Speaker B: About January? Yeah. Amen. Amen. Dry January.
Just got to make it.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Through.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: Right? Exactly. So what is.
What are we kicking off the.
[00:03:45] Speaker C: Year with?
So just for fun, I thought we. And take advantage of the opportunity and timing because it is all upside.
And also just to show our age, I thought I would put together A Letterman's top 10 list for the year. Some things to look forward to and, you know, just drawing upon Bluefield's research and what we've done and what we see.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Going forward. Good. Well, I'm glad you're doing a top 10 rather than a stupid Petrix.
So.
So let's kick it off.
If I. If I had sound effects, I'd do a drum roll, but here we go, number 10. What do.
[00:04:22] Speaker C: We got? All right, we got number 10.
We got the hangovers over. We're going to see money moving into M and A. We're going to see pick up an M and A after what has been a pretty slow year this year. Been dragging on for 12 to 18 months. So I expect to see more deal flow from strategics and private equity with things like interest rates going down and a need to. Need to move into the.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: Water sector. Yep.
It was slow but big. Right. We had the American essential.
[00:04:54] Speaker C: Deal announced, but that was the surprise of the year.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: Quite honestly. But overall deal flow is down, so. Okay, so we're going to look for deal flow to improve.
That's consistent with what I'm seeing. So what do we got on.
[00:05:10] Speaker C: Number nine?
Number nine.
I've come up with some funny names here. Trash.
[00:05:16] Speaker A: Is.
[00:05:16] Speaker C: Cash. Right. We just did some buy solid research.
We expect that biosolids continue to receive greater focus from Wastewater treatment, utilities because of things like pfas. But also tipping fees are up. So we're seeing disposal costs doubling by 2035 according to our numbers, to about four and a half billion. So there's going to be greater focus.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: On that. Yeah, so that's a market driven assessment rather than a regulatory driven assessment. You know, we've seen a lot of environmental rollbacks, but that's, this is, this is more market driven. Okay, interesting.
Very good. We got number eight.
[00:05:56] Speaker C: Coming up.
We've got mobile treatment is in. So we're going to see more mobile if you want, even want to call it temporary treatment. That's driven by everything from climate but also companies looking to third parties to address some of their on site industrial wastewater treatment and drink and water inflows or process water.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: As well. Yeah. So is this more of a capex of companies trying to avoid capex by kind of renting the.
[00:06:30] Speaker C: Mobile solution?
Exactly. That's the perfect way to put it. So instead of having to put down and manage and, or operate under a capex budget, they'll just throw it under operations and gives them a bit more.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: Financial flexibility.
Got it. All right, next on.
[00:06:49] Speaker C: Our list. Yeah, we got number seven, we've got the lead pipe crisis just got smaller. And so the EPA has just revised its inventories revising its estimates from 9.2 million lines to 4 million lines. So the trouble with that is everybody's been focused on lead inventory or lead service lines. The opportunity just got smaller.
The upside is should cost a little bit less. And the problem isn't as bad as they.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: Originally thought.
That's good, that's good for the ratepayer because they're not going to have to, you know, bear the brunt of the lead service line inventory replacement that they thought they were.
[00:07:32] Speaker C: Going to. Yeah, cities and towns should be happy about this. And so as you can imagine, the numbers still weight heavily towards places like the Midwest. There are a couple states that really took some pretty big revisions. I think one in particular.
[00:07:47] Speaker B: Was Florida.
[00:07:47] Speaker C: Oh wow. All right, number six, design build is dead.
So we're going to see more collaborative delivery. It's been on the uptick. We've just done some analysis on that and we're looking at about a $21 billion market throwing flowing through collaborative delivery. That's everything from design build, progressive design build, a little bit sear as well and definitely less on the, on the P3 front, which we include in that in this segment if you will. And so it, but it's been trending Upward and I think engineer. A number of engineering and construction companies are extremely happy.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: About this. Yeah, Bart Martin and Lifwin Clark will be.
[00:08:33] Speaker C: Happy.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: So. Exactly. Yeah.
All right, number. Are we on number.
[00:08:38] Speaker C: Five now? We're down to five. All right, good.
Here we go. So the A impact, AI impact on water is only going to be in the water margins, meaning it's not going to be as great as everybody expects. For the water sector.
It definitely immediately in 2026, if anything, and I may have mentioned this to you previously, that I was actually listening to another podcast out in the ether somewhere and they had said the safest jobs out there are water and wastewater utility operators from AI can't say the same for a market research industry analyst, but that's a.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: Different story. Yeah, not. Not unexpected. So, all right, we got.
[00:09:23] Speaker C: Number four.
And for number four in the US we got California Secret Weapon goes National. What is that? We're talking about water reus.
So I think our analysis shows that there's an eastward movement of reuse investments, municipal reuse specifically. So we're going to see more of that happening not only in California, which will continue to grow, but we're also seeing it on the Eastern seaboard in places like Virginia, Georgia, definitely Florida. That's long, long standing even as far north as New York because of things like saltwater intrusion into aquifers, that's overdrawing, rising sea levels, all impacting the salinity levels of, of groundwater levels or groundwater, should I say. And so, yeah, there'll be a bigger opportunity there. Continue to.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Go forward.
Bruno Pigott stepped into the Water Reuse association at the right.
[00:10:19] Speaker C: Time. So.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. Here we go.
[00:10:22] Speaker C: Number four. Number four, Silicon Valley needs water and they'll pay anything for it. That has to do with data centers. That is the topic du jour of the second half of 2025. It will continue into 2026. Hyperscalers are spending about $4.1 billion through 2030 on things like water water management to address their.
Their thirst.
One thing that shouldn't be overlooked, and maybe this is probably the bigger point to be made, is looking at our analysis. When you look at data center footprint of the total 72% of the water demand, or their footprint is really from the power sector. That's really where the water is being used rather than on site. That's the.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: Other 28%. Yeah. All right, we're getting down to the nitty gritty. Here we go.
[00:11:16] Speaker C: Number two. So that's a good question. Is Letterman, does top 10 always go in order. That was always the question I had.
But the dam is finally going to break. The state revolving funds are finally going to hit the street.
At our last analysis, which was close to the middle of the year, we'll do an update pretty soon. But only about 17 to 18% of the state revolving funds through IIJA had hit the street. And so the optimism is that that money's going to finally hit the street and construction companies will finally be able to start working, if they haven't.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: Already started. All right, and here we go.
The number one thing to look forward to in 2026. What do you.
[00:12:00] Speaker C: Got, man? This is not optimistic. Now that I look at it, hackers target water. Cybersecurity doubles the deal size. And that means that cybersecurity is going to play a big role not only in the procurement from utilities when they're talking to vendors and OEMs as a as they procure equipment which in many cases has Internet or are already connected. But it's going to continue to be a bigger problem. We already saw a number of events happen in 2025, and there's no reason that's not going to continue.
[00:12:37] Speaker B: Going forward.
Interesting. All right, that was a great top 10. And look forward to seeing an analysis come December how that top 10.
[00:12:48] Speaker C: Played out. Ooh, I'll write that in my notes.
We'll see what it looks like. No, it's a good idea. I.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: Like it. All right, Reese, as always, thanks for the knowledge. Really appreciate the time and have a.
[00:13:01] Speaker C: Great 2026. Yeah, happy 2026 to everybody. You can say that through January.
So here's that's to you, Dave. Thanks a million and twenty. Talk.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: Again soon. Yep, we'll talk. Have a.
[00:13:13] Speaker C: Good.
[00:13:13] Speaker B: One. Cheers. Bye.
As always, great information from Bluefield Research and Reece Tisdale. Now it's time for the main event, our interview with Water's Kevin Gast. So let's get that water flowing.
Kevin, welcome to the Water Values podcast. It is phenomenal to have you on.
Have been really looking forward to this conversation. I know we have a mutual friend in Damian Georgino and it's great to to have you onto the show. How are you.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: Doing today?
Wonderful. And thank you so much for having me and thank you to your listeners.
[00:13:44] Speaker B: As well. Great.
So for those who may not be familiar with you, could you just give us a little thumbnail on your history and how you came to the.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: Water sector?
Yeah, of course. So been in the industry for over 20 years. Was originally the global group CEO for a very large conglomerate that Operated in multitude of different countries and continents across the planet.
And this family business was in everything from, or is in everything from construction, civil engineering, paint manufacturing, waterproofing, geosynthetics, and then obviously water treatment and water purification.
You know, ideally, or ironically in that process, you know, we probably kissed every frog underneath every sun when it came to water treatment technologies. From membranes to filters to chemical solutions, biological solutions.
And through that conglomerate, we invested and spent a lot of time in research and development in various different avenues of our businesses, one of which was obviously water treatment. And we realized that there was a certain onset of technologies that we started exploring and developing. And eventually we got to what we have today, which is our company Water with the two V's that make the W. So my best Texan accent, it is pronounced water, but if you're probably outside of the US it would be water.
And very simply put, it is a new revolutionary advanced water treatment technology which we then incubated in that conglomerate and then separated as a dedicated standalone entity about two years ago. And I transitioned from group global CEO of that conglomerate to a chairmanship role and then took over the reins on the day to day for water about two years ago as well. Based out of Boston, Texas.
As I always say, I'm a South African by birthright, German by blood, and Texan.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: By heart.
That's awesome. Well, it certainly sounds like in kissing all those frogs you may have found a prince.
So could you give us a little background on a little more on what water does and who.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: Water is?
No thanks. And I think probably as to say the onset, I probably got sick of losing money on bad water and watching sort of entire developments get held hostage by 80 year old pipes, technology that's been developed and plants that have been running since when Truman was still president.
You know, if you look at, you know, how many challenges there are in the water treatment space from the amounts of trillions of gallons, you know, we lose a year to leaks, to a massive shortage in workforce because, you know, there's a lot of people that are retiring right now that just can't run these systems anymore.
So water was sort of developed in that mindset. And to say, hey, you know, we can, you know, ironically we own a pharmaceutical company that does a lot of advance development in cation exchange technologies as well. And we say to ourselves, look, we can develop the latest, greatest membrane that's infused with ions and various other different things, but eccentrically, you're dealing with a problem that just gets exacerbated over time where you're going to still deal with biofiling, sediment formation or clogged filters or OSHA requirements for chemical elements and so on. So we realize that this is not the avenue to go and we need to find something else. And our sort of birth from a technological perspective was going down the advanced oxidation process, advanced reduction process elements.
And we ended up developing a technology called Faraday reactors, and we spell it Far A D Y reactors. A bit of nuance around that as well. And the sort of secret source in our Faraday reactors is a process we call ltip, which stands for Advanced Low Tension Electroporation Process. And really the key word here is electropor.
And the short, short version of how that's sort of put together is if you look in the biomedical field, electroporation is widely utilized with mrdna, it's where you take high voltage electricity, you cut open a cell wall and you can put DNA in, take DNA out, cell wall closes again, and that's just how it's utilized today. There was a study done in the early 2000s where NASA, EPA and a few other leading universities participated and said, hey, can we utilize this biomedical technology and commercialize it as a potential water disinfection?
And the outcome of that study was, yes, very efficient, very effective, very elegant. But you need like a nuclear power plant of energy to treat like a glass of water. And at the same time, every time they would build these reactors, you'd need precious metal type electrodes, anodes, cathodes to withstand that amount of energy. And those things would just deteriorate so quickly. So the sheer cost was just insane.
And that's where we started going down that pathway and looking at that. And we coined electroporation, or advanced low tension electroporation in the water treatment space a few years ago now.
And the big difference really between us versus another advanced oxidation process or an EC technology or anything like that is we've switched from direct current to alternating current.
So not dc, but ac.
We use very, very little energy.
And more importantly as well is you're now able to not only disinfect from an oxidative perspective, but you can also do reduction process, so you can cleave and break down those chemical bonds. So at a very high level, that is what water sort of has become, and it's become a lot more than that. And we were fortunate. In this single year of 2025, we were the first company in the history, not just in the water space, but in history, to win CES Best of Innovation, Time Magazine Best Invention Award. The World Future Award as well as Inc. Magazine Best Business Award as well. So we feel we're doing something right. I always tell people that from a technological development perspective, we realized we had a square wooden wheel and we figured out how to make a round wooden wheel. But we still have a wooden wheel and we still have a lot.
[00:20:06] Speaker B: To do. Yeah, that's a lot there.
So disinfection and where.
What, what applications are, are the most likely uses of this is on site reuse. Is it, is it in developing countries for cleaning up water supply? What, where do you anticipate this technology has its.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: Greatest applicability?
Yeah, we broke it down into sort of four main verticals that we saw. Now, first and foremost, this technology has the ability to, yes, become or is one of probably the most efficient disinfection technologies. So that includes exotic species, you know, Cryptosporidium, Leo, Janella, guardia, cis, amoebas, protozoas, viruses, bacterias, whatever.
That's relatively the easy part. So if you're looking at just pure disinfection, that's what we can do. But we really categorized it into four dedicated verticals. The first vertical is, we call it real estate and aquatics. And that's everything from artificial beaches, surf parks, large bodies of water, commercial water parks, and I think great wolf lodges, Kalahari resorts.
Because to handle that type of disinfection and competing against companies where you're just using regenerative media with chlorine and uv, this becomes a lot more efficient, a lot more effective.
And it's not a, you know, there's not too many regulatory headwinds as well as competitive environment. So for us, real estate, aquatics is one of our verticals. But I think the two verticals that we really want to put our attention on for, for today's conversation is obviously wastewater, sewerage and municipal, where if you, I think, are probably our primary usage is if you would, if you would slice secondary treatment like straight in half, we'd probably be falling straight in that category where we can handle everything from middle of secondary treatment, tertiary treatment, and then disinfection. And that includes existing facilities, upgrading old facilities, building new facilities. Because it's a modulated solution, we can plug and play very, very easily, but we have limitations.
I keep repeating myself when I say to the market, hey, we are not a disinfection technology. We cannot disinfect. Sorry, not a desalinization technology. We cannot desalinate and we can't handle large solids. So, you know, from a wastewater treatment perspective, ideally you want to have Traditional pretreatment, traditional conventional primary treatment, and to a certain extent, a bit of a secondary treatment as well. And then we can pick up the water from that perspective and run it after that. And I think use cases for us thus far has probably been dpr, direct potable reuse, where we can take the discharge water from wastewater and then treat that all the way to potable drinking water. I think we've done over 25 million gallons to date in the US alone. I think we're definitely one of the companies that have done more than most in that space.
Ipr, dpr, a lot of those elements. And then on site reuse, I think is another big one for us. Where data centers is a big market we're focusing on right now. Same with commercial buildings, industrial play. We work with Fortune 50, Fortune 500 companies where we can handle not only their feedstock order going into their manufacturing facilities, but also the discharge side on the back end where they want to recycle that or treat it so they can meet some permit requirements, cooling systems, stadiums, conference centers, universities, any of those type of things.
So I think those are really the two main verticals for us, especially for.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: Today'S discussion. Okay, so you mentioned data centers. Huge hot topic. You mentioned it's a big market for you.
What do you see as the, you know, how big is that market going to get? Because the way I look at it, data centers are having trouble getting cited. Is, are the data centers going to stay in the U.S. do you see them being cited elsewhere because of marketing trouble? And does that impact how water goes to market in terms of getting the product in the.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: Data centers?
Yeah, I think what a lot of people don't realize is energy equals water and water equals energy.
You know, the biggest cost of water is the transportation of it.
And data centers are no different.
Now, yes, most data centers, I mean, there's a lot of fact and fiction that people, you know, there's a lot of, you know, people blowing things up that aren't necessarily necessary to be blown up. Data centers do use water, without a doubt, but a lot of them are closed loop systems. Now you need a feed them to energize the system and then you can run it on a closed loop and you have some loss of material that you need to fill in. But if you're looking at a hyperscale data center In Virginia using 99.9% reuse, half of that energy is RO, and then they sort of laugh at that draft restrictions that go with it. So we see that as A massive market.
And we've helped quite a few other data center developers where they ran a challenge where they would need to get approvals for their data center, they needed to get community approvals. Obviously most of that water is then being pulled from an aquifer somewhere. And I mean, as a Texan resident myself, we're already under water restrictions and the water restrictions are just getting worse and worse.
So when you add a data center into the mix or a large water hogger into the mix, then suddenly that becomes a bigger problem and the communities are rising up to that and saying, look, we will not as a, or as a county or as a city or as a municipality approve that.
And I think that's where we can play a massive difference for a lot of these developers to say, hey, you don't have to use aquifer water. We can use a discharged, a contaminated source, a water source that nobody is looking at and we can reuse it again for a very low cost. And I think that's where a big difference is for us in that. And to your first question, I'd probably lean to my fellow compatriot Elon's mentality around that, but I do believe over the next 20 plus years we're probably going to have more data centers in space or that just from a pure mathematical perspective, that's one that makes more sense than having them on Earth because the sun has got a lot more power out there than it does.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: In here.
Very interesting, Fascinating, fascinating. One thing that I purposely didn't ask earlier that, that I'm interested in, do you see your technology as one day displacing chlorine or you know, free chlorine or chloramine disinfection for.
[00:27:11] Speaker A: Water utilities.
I think it's naturally happening. I mean, if we look at a lot of the guideline documents from EPA and other, you know, world health standard type protocols, you'll see that chemical disinfection, chlorine and others are being sort of moved to the side just because of all of their side effects, byproducts and so forth. And I think there's a natural progression happening as we speak and that's being moved out. And I think in an order of precedence, you're probably going to have chemicals losing gear first. I'd probably put filters second, and then I'd probably put membranes third and then I'd say the go to market is going to be the electric field, be it high voltage electricity mixed with chemicals or mixed with some other technology, be it an electro coagulation electro oxidation, I think that's where the future lies. And I think anybody still spending time in the other ones haven't seen the writing on the wall yet.
Now, are we going to be displacing them?
I think in certain instances we complement a lot of the existing technologies. I know for a fact from the membrane guys, they are so challenged handling certain waters because it damages their membranes.
We could play a big part where we can handle a lot of that water for them before it enters the membranes, especially when you need a desalinate.
The quality of the water is just so much better and the membranes last so much longer. But in another instance, we're direct competitors for them because at the end of the day we're doing roughly about an 80% OPEC saving because we have very little consumables, if any at all.
Even if you build a Rolls Royce, you still need to do a bit of maintenance on it. But our OPEC savings is significant and we're at least on average about 40% cheaper on a Capex perspective as well, with on average about a 40% less energy usage and a 60% footprint reduction versus conventional technology. So will we be displacing them immediately? Probably no. And will we be working with them? Probably more, yes.
But over time I think natural progression is going to start phasing out.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: These technologies. Yeah, that's a great segue for this next question about how the waters technology kind of is pushing towards this more resilient, more flexible, decentralized treatment model. I mean, you've touched on it already, but in terms of your, you mentioned modular design and that just feeds right into decentralized. How does that all.
[00:29:52] Speaker A: Fit together?
As I mentioned earlier, the biggest cost of water is the transportation of it and the centralized model is dying.
The writing is on the wall. It is obvious if we just look at our current pipeline. I mean our pipeline is over $350 million as it is right now. And a lot of that is property developers, municipalities, cities and a variety of everybody in between where they can't get fresh potable drinking water, they can't get sewerage treatment or infrastructure, and their only solution is to pipe these things on miles and miles and the cost of that is just ridiculous. So they're looking at a decentralized model. But even if you go with a package plant, an MBR solution, it is still hellishly expensive and it is still very, very expensive to maintain as well. So the way we looked at it is hey, we have to come up with something better than this. And when we started out initially, I had so many customers say to me, well, if you haven't built one in Texas, you haven't built one yet.
We looked at it and we said we can go around and build a fixed un with exactly the specific criteria that that customer wants or that use case. And we can build 10,000 of these things and we're going to always run into these things. So initially we developed our first product or our first mobile unit, which we call alpha units. And these things are a 54 foot by 8 foot trailer on wheels that can handle 100,000 gallons every 24 hours.
And, and the idea was initially was just so that if somebody tells me that I can tell them, look, in 24 hours I'll drive to your offices, we'll hook up a pump to your local fountain river dam body of water and you know, or sewerage facility, and within two hours you'll have potable drinking water where me and you will be able to drink from it as well. And that just, you know, I'm a, you know, a lot of people talk a lot of big game and I'm a very firm believer of, you know, proof is on the pudding. You got to, you got to have the walk for the talk.
And that's why, you know, we've done over 4.3 billion gallons of water treatment to date. Over 8,000 different tests and all sorts of shapes and sizes. And it's for that reason as we realize that the customer needs a decentralized way that we can solve them. So not only do we offer a mobile solution, but we also package plant solutions, we offer skid mount solutions. And our manufacturing times are ridiculously shorter. Our mobile use, I mean, 100,000 gallon Alpha unit we manufacture in eight to 12 weeks. If we have to go to a fixed unit.
I mean, right now as we speak, we're doing for a Fortune 50 company that approached us, an existing company that approached us probably, I think two weeks ago, and they said they needed a 40,000 gallon machine that can take their discharge water from their industrial manufacturing facility and then treat it all the way to potable drinking water. And they need a unit, as in before Christmas. And in a space of 21 days, we're building the machine for them.
So just to give you the idea, the rapidness of how quick we can respond to these things and how quick we can assist customers, which is vastly, vastly different in comparison to a more centralized or a more.
[00:33:09] Speaker B: Traditional methodology. Absolutely. Is disaster recovery on.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: Your radar?
100%, yeah. I mean, the alpha Units.
When we designed it and commissioned it, the idea was for it to be units that can be demonstrated and illustrated and in a very short space of time. We got approached during the hurricane seasons by various states and private organizations saying, hey, we need assistance on this asap, and we can actually tow one of those Alphas, have it out there literally within a few hours. It takes us to about two hours to hook it up and have drinking water available for residents. And that's potable drinking water.
And then also at the same time, there's a Dow, a military application as well for forward base and special forces. You don't have to drop 40, 40 foot containers with bottled water.
We can just hook up one of these things locally and you've got potable drinking water, as many as you like. So there's definitely a lot of.
[00:34:04] Speaker B: Those applications.
Do you have any case studies of how the product has rolled out to the market?
I'd be really interested in.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: Hearing that.
Well, I think what a lot of people don't realize is our first unit that we built was a couple of years ago in South Africa.
And I know sometimes people have a.
An interesting perception of South Africa as a country. People think it's tiki huts and people go to school on the back of elephants. But it's a metropolitan, very developed country. And one of our customers over there ended up building a $1.5 billion development, a new city between Johannesburg and Pretoria.
And they actually wanted an artificial beach. And we said, look, we've got a lot of experience on the geosynthetic side, and we've built a few beach many years before. But their biggest issue is they didn't have a source water. They only had, for a lack of a better definition, black water, which is basically raw sewerage minus the solids and the inorganics. And they said, that's their only feedstock, really, and can we develop a machine that can handle that? And we said, sure, but we want to try some of our newer technologies. So we ended up developing that solution. And that machine runs about 3.2 million gallons of water through it every single day. And it's been running for, for over five years now. And I think that's a big difference where people realize to say, how many installations have you got? Where have you been deployed? And I must say, from the different companies that we do compete with in the different verticals, we've done a lot of traction and a lot of movement in a very, very short period of time. And we've got commercial installations in a variety of different Things from dpr, industrial water treatments, as well as things like artificial beaches and surf parks.
So we have a wide variety of different things for people to look at. And I think that's something that people need to remember.
We're not running out of water, we're running out of excuses. And history is going to remember the people who made clean water boringly profitable and infinitely available.
And I think people should look at that to say, before we wait for the government or next rainstorm to save us, the technologies already exist to make any building, factory, city water independently already exists.
It's shipping today and it pays for itself. The only thing sort of missing is the decision to deploy it. And I think that's where people need to realize water is not infinite and there's a crisis on its way. We need to.
[00:36:38] Speaker B: Move fast.
So Kevin, you earlier identified these fantastic awards that you've won in 2025.
What does 2026 and the future hold.
[00:36:50] Speaker A: For water?
I think for us we are trying to solve the water problem at every point and we're, we're being laser focused on our approach in a very methodical, data driven, lowest hanging fruit first, least barrier to entry way. However, we were approached about eight months ago by another very well known large conglomerate and they said, look, we love your technology and what it can do, but can you potentially come up with a home residential solution where we can do whole home water filtration as well as whole home water softening?
And we thought about it and we said to them, look, hold up beers and sort of give us eight months and phone us back again.
And eight months later we developed a product called the Shield.
And the Shield is not available yet. You can pre purchase it right now. But the idea behind it is in probably Q1, Q2 of 2026, it will be readily available for people to buy it for their homes.
They can put it in their garage, in their attic, in their basement. For a lot of us living in the south here, where the water is quite hard, you need something that can do water softening as well. So here you have a solution that not only handles all of the endocrine disruptors, the trace pharmaceuticals, pfas and a variety of other things from micro nanoplastics inside your municipal water right now, but at the same time it can soften your water without the use of salts or some other technology with a long life cycle to it as well. And we believe, given the nuances of what this is going to be and how this technology is developing, we believe we can probably get it done for under $3,000 for a household. So it's a very, very cost efficient solution where you technically don't have to do any maintenance or very little maintenance to it. And I feel as a father myself with three teenage daughters, I wanted to make sure that the tap water that we drink today, because people don't realize this, but their tap water is. There's some rough stuff on that is really actually clean and it is not disrupting our hormones.
We don't have.
I mean, there's a stat that says every baby born on planet Earth these days are born with a credit card size of microplastics in their body at birth already. So that's this crazy stat. And I'm trying to solve that and we're trying to come up with a solution where we go wherever the water gets touched. How can we solve that? And I think the shield is going to be a big thing and I think the shield solves a lot of those problems.
So that's our plan.
[00:39:23] Speaker B: For 2026. Great. Well, I look forward to seeing the rollout.
Kevin, you've been phenomenal today. Before we sign off here, do you have a leave behind message that you would like to impart to.
[00:39:35] Speaker A: The listeners?
I think in the day and age we're living in right now, the big drive right now is energy.
Data center needs energy and there's this and there's that. But the silent problem here is water without a single doubt. And I think if you just see the investment market playing and shifting already, there's a massive shift just in the last 12 months and how much money is actually being invested directly into the water treatment space versus a year ago.
And I think mathematically the writing's on the wall and from everybody that's just at home listening right now that might not be in the water sector or just a homeowner or anything that basis, ask yourself the true question, what is really in your tap water? What is really in your bottled water? And why are you drinking that? Or why are you allowing your children and your family to put that in your body? And why aren't we freaking out and saying, hey, we need to solve this? And if you ask the simple question of hey, when I get my tap water or my bottled water and it was treated by chlorine or fluorides or whatever, or hey, does it still have endocrine disruptors in it, yes or no?
And you'll be surprised on those answers. And the only way we fix this is by looking at innovative and new generation of technologies And I think as a final word, I'd like to electrify the industry.
I'd love people to see us as the Tesla of water.
We are making a change in that difference. We're learning as we're going. We're not the solution for everybody, but we're trying hard to solve the problem. And, and we'd love more support and we'd love to sort of support other people that are driving for the.
[00:41:11] Speaker B: Same objectives.
Terrific. So, Kevin, for those who want to find out more about you and more about your work at water, where can they go to get.
[00:41:20] Speaker A: That information?
Easiest place is to go to our website, which is just VV a T E r dot com or water with my besttexinacent again dot com. And for your listeners outside of the US it's just vaatar dot com. The two V's make a width, and depending on if you're on the east coast or the west coast, somebody might even say it's a.
[00:41:40] Speaker B: Gang sign.
Well, I'm sure it's easier to get intellectual property protection for VV A T E R than it is for W A T E R. No doubt. Yeah. All right. Well, Kevin, terrific speaking with you. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to chat with me, and we'll talk again soon. Thanks.
[00:41:59] Speaker A: So much.
Thank you so much to you and.
[00:42:01] Speaker B: Your listeners.
What a great interview by Kevin. Lots of nuggets in there about decentralized water treatment and the pace of technology. And I just wanted to say thanks for coming on. Kevin really appreciated learning about waters technology, and you were fantastic. Really, really enjoyed that conversation.
Well, I'd love to know what you thought about the interview with Kevin. Please check out the Show Notes page for information and links on this episode. Just Google the Water Values podcast and click the first link that comes up.
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In closing, please remember to keep the core message of the Water Values Podcast in mind as you go about your daily business. Water is our most valuable resource, so please join me by going out into the world and acting like it's Sam.
You've been listening to the Water Values Podcast. Thank you for spending some of your day with my dad and me.
Well, thank you for tuning in to the disclaimer. I'm a lawyer licensed in Indiana and Colorado, and nothing in this podcast should be taken as providing legal advice or as establishing an attorney client relationship with you or with anyone else. Additionally, nothing in this podcast should be considered a solicitation for professional employment. I'm just a lawyer that finds water issues interesting and that believes greater public education is needed about water issues.
And that includes enhancing my own education about water issues because no one knows.
