Antoine Walter

Central States Water Resources acquires small, distressed rural water and wastewater systems across the United States, brings them into regulatory compliance, and operates them as one regulated utility. The consolidator, owned by private-equity firm Sciens Capital since 2018, makes deals as small as the US$350,000 it paid for an Arkansas treatment plant in 2019, trading deal size for volume.

I got to meet with US’s largest consolidator – in less than a decade; they changed the fate of 800 distressed communities across ten states. Why, how, and for which results? What comes next? Let’s explore:

with 🎙️ Josiah Cox, founder and president of Central States Water Resources

💧 Central States Water Resources transforms how water utilities work by acquiring small, often non-compliant systems and then using expertise, technology, and innovation to quickly assess and turn them into reliable infrastructure.

This episode is part of my Series on the Water Crisis in America

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Philanthropic Capital could be the third source of investment the Water Sector desperately needed to find a balance. How will the blend of philanthropy into private funding and federal grants change the name of the game? Let’s explore:

with 🎙️ Sean Davis, founder and managing director of Merton Capital Partners, adjunct professor at the Palm Beach Atlantic University, and Author of “Solving the Giving Pledge Bottleneck.”

💧 Merton Capital Partners develops innovative investment strategies to unlock philanthropy’s potential by incentivizing corporations to generate large-scale good in their core businesses.

This episode is part of my Series on the Water Crisis in America

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The Water Challenge is three-dimensional. We face broken pipes, broken policies, and broken economics! Yet, if we get to the bottom of it, the economic one seems to be the root cause of all the other problems. What if Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs actually explained it? That’s what we’ll uncover:

with 🎙️ Tom Rooney – Chairman and Operating Partner at Sciens Water

💧 Sciens is a research-driven investment fund that identifies uncovered, under-researched, or misunderstood water sector opportunities that are undercapitalized.

This episode is part of my Series on the Water Crisis in America

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De Nora built a water business from near-zero to a 2022 Euronext Milan IPO in seven years by buying capability, anchored by its 2015 Severn Trent water-purification acquisition for US$81.2M. Seven acquisitions later, energy group Snam paid US$475M for a 33% stake the year before the listing.

De Nora is still one of the very few water names that actually rang the bell, which is exactly why I came back to the water-IPO drought in 600 private water bets, zero public exits.

with 🎙️ Mirka Wilderer – CEO at De Nora Water Technologies

💧 De Nora is a leading provider of equipment, systems, disinfection, and filtration solutions for water and wastewater treatment.

This episode is part of my Series on the Water Crisis in America

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Puraffinity has raised US$26.1M to scale a bio-based adsorbent that captures PFAS for reuse instead of destroying the forever chemicals. The British company, founded in 2015 and backed by Kindred Capital, Octopus Ventures, and BGF, runs its Puratech G400 media at deployment scale, replacing far larger volumes of conventional activated carbon in PFAS treatment.

💧 Puraffinity is a GreenTech Company that designs smart materials for environmental applications.​ Their cutting-edge material design and creative engineering approach may provide a new horizon to solve the daunting PFAS / Forever chemicals challenge we face.

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Xylem grew from a pump and instrumentation supplier into a full water solutions provider through 22 acquisitions worth US$10.4B in disclosed value since 2012. Patrick Decker, who ran the New York-listed company as chief executive, anchored that Let us solve water strategy with the US$7.5B Evoqua deal in 2023.

Patrick was kind enough to spend some time with me to review some of the hot topics in our sector, yet he was awaited on stage for a speech, so we had to be fast. Yet it was such as pleasant experience (as you’ll discover) that I’ll make sure to bother him a bit to back for a deeper dive!

with 🎙️ Patrick Decker – CEO at Xylem

💧 Xylem is one of the largest water and wastewater technology companies globally and follows the simple motto: “Let’s solve water.”

This episode is part of my Series on the Water Crisis in America

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New York City did a bold move in the 1990s by betting on Nature-Based Solutions to protect its drinking water quality. Yet new challenges arise: how can nature help the Big Apple on its path to Climate Change adaptation? Let’s explore:

with 🎙️ Paul Gallay – Lecturer & Co-Director at the Columbia Climate School

💧 Columbia University is a global leader in climate and sustainability education, aiming to bring an interdisciplinary knowledge base for future climate leaders to work with businesses, communities, governments, and civil society to address the climate crisis.

This episode is part of my Series on the Water Crisis in America

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Anaergia turns wastewater plants into carbon-negative-fuel factories, capturing biogas from sewage sludge and food waste through anaerobic digestion. The Canadian company scaled that waste-to-energy platform through four acquisitions between 2008 and 2013, and trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange as ANRG.TO.

You already know that fuel: we’re talking about biomethane. But with a twist! By leveraging synergies across a city’s departments, biomethane production can grow on steroids at scale and today. How can waste and wastewater better work together? Let’s explore:

with 🎙️ Kunal Shah – Chief Growth Officer at Anaergia and council member of the World Biogas Association, the Singapore Water Association, and Imagine H2O Asia.

💧 Anaergia ambitions to convert waste into a carbon-negative fuel for a sustainable future.

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When it comes to Sustainable Development Goals, we often limit Water to SDG 6. Yet, water plays a key role in many more of them! Let’s explore it:

with 🎙️ Kevin Sofen – Director of Innovation at W. S. Darley & Co., Host of the Smart Firefighting podcast, and Co-Host of the SDG Talks Podcast.

💧 The SDG Talks podcast highlights Change Makers and their work towards the UN SDGs with a sound passion for highlighting people and organizations that will transform the world into a better place for everyone.

This episode is part of my Series on the Water Crisis in America

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2.2 million Americans don’t have access to water and wastewater services in their homes. 44 million more recently experienced water quality issues. Isn’t it time to effectively close the water gap?

The first step to closing is probably acknowledging: an information mission that’s been taken on by DigDeep. Today, we’ll explore how they act to help populations we’ve left behind for too long. Are you wondering how you could help, too? Let’s explore:

with 🎙️ George McGraw – CEO & Founder of DigDeep

💧 DigDeep is a human rights nonprofit serving the 2.2 million+ Americans without the sinks, bathtubs, or toilets that the rest of the US takes for granted.

This episode is part of my Series on the Water Crisis in America

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We’ve been regularly touching on how we’re facing an aging water infrastructure: and so is the water workforce as well! In light of the “silver wave,” we currently experience, how can we transform the water industry to attract new, diverse and dynamic talents?

This age and knowledge pyramid problem is of particular concern when you’re administrating a mid-sized or rural infrastructure. Hence today’s episode promises to be a fascinating exploration:

with 🎙️ Errick Simmons – Mayor of Greenville, Mississippi, and co-chair of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative.

💧 The Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative works to improve the river’s water quality, restore its habitat, coordinate the state’s efforts, create sustainable economies around the basin, and celebrate the river’s culture and history.

This episode is part of my Series on the Water Crisis in America

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The job of a Water Professional can be lonely: in many utilities, water treaters are on their own – or not far from it. But to keep you growing as a person, a certain friend has your back, your favorite water podcast.

Don’t worry; this one is not about bragging (as much as I praise my water podcast, I’m not that selfish yet!). It’s all about getting to know better one of the legends of that game:

with 🎙️ Trace Blackmore – Owner of Blackmore Enterprises and Host of the “Scaling Up! H2O” podcast

💧 The “Scaling Up! H2O” podcast intends to prove to you every week why working in Industrial Water Treatment is the best job in the world.

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Our World is facing new water challenges that will be hard to solve with old solutions only. This means that helping new entrants and mid-market green tech companies to thrive is also the best segway to putting their impact on steroids!

But navigating the jungle of finance, investment, regulations, institutions, and existing business canvas can be tough. Yet no one ever said you couldn’t get some help, as we’ll explore:

with 🎙️ James Rees – Chief Impact Officer at Botanical Water Technologies and Board Advisor at Bluerloop, Droople, and Noverram.

💧 Botanical Water Technologies strives to positively impact water scarcity by providing a new source of drinkable, sustainable, plant-based water for social and environmental projects.

This episode is part of my Series on the Water Crisis in America

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With only 9 million households that hold an insurance policy against flood risks, the most common and costly natural catastrophe is still widely undercovered in the US. Will the new federal efforts finally open the long-awaited age of pre-disaster mitigation?

with 🎙️ Nick Shufro – Deputy Assistant Administrator, Federal Insurance & Mitigation Administration, Resilience, FEMA

💧 The Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration (FIMA) manages the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and a range of programs designed to mitigate against future losses from all hazards, including floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters.

This episode is part of my Series on the Water Crisis in America

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What’s about 28 times more concerning than carbon emissions? Methane releases into the atmosphere. It’s the same amount of carbon but with a much higher immediate global warming impact. Hence the concern when a recent study shows how we underestimate the emissions of biomethane production by a factor of two!

What’s wrong with the biomethane supply chain? Where does it leak the most? Who are these 5% of bad pupils responsible for over 60% of the emissions? What can we do about it? Let’s explore:

with 🎙️ Semra Bakkaloglu – Research Associate at the Imperial College of London

💧 Semra recently showed in her research how the methane emissions along the biosolids supply chain were vastly underestimated and proposed straightforward actions to correct it swiftly.

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Rainwater Harvesting just got an all-new flavor, and it’s sparkling! Indeed, next to the conventional approaches where that water would be used for irrigation, Richard’s Rainwater kinda created a new market segment: bottled rainwater.

How can you fight Big Water by actually putting water in cans and bottles? How’s that approach greener and more sustainable? What could it unlock in the long term? We covered this:

with 🎙️ Taylor O’Neil – CEO of Richard’s Rainwater.

💧 Richard’s Rainwater markets what it claims to be “The Water of Tomorrow,” aka Bottled Rainwater!

This episode is part of my Series on the Water Crisis in America

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Seth Siegel is a voice that counts in the Water World – having published some of the most influential water books of the past decade and spoken on every scene you can think of.

Yet, in every keynote he delivers, he never fails to captivate the audience to convey his message home. There’s something wrong with what we drink, the way we manage our water, and the allocation of the precious blue resource. And there’s a better way around: simply replicate what works! That’s far too much to pack in 30 minutes? For sure, yet I tried ⬇️

with 🎙️ Seth Siegel – writer, lawyer, activist, serial entrepreneur, and an acclaimed public speaker.

💧 You might have read his “Troubled Water” book – and if you haven’t, you should – or his international best-seller “Let there be Water,” translated into 20+ languages.

This episode is part of my Series on the Water Crisis in America

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SOURCE Global raised a US$130M Series D in 2022 to scale its solar-powered Hydropanels, a system that makes drinking water from ambient air entirely off-grid. Breakthrough Energy Ventures led the round, two years after BlackRock backed a US$50M Series C aimed at communities the centralized grid never reached.

Update: this conversation is from 2022. Four years on, SOURCE has gone quiet and effectively died. I broke down exactly what went wrong in how SOURCE Global lost everything in just 12 months.

We’ll explore today how even in the US, no less than 44 million people may need to find a solution to fix their tap, and try to evaluate how Source could fit in the role!

with 🎙️ Colin Goddard – Director at Source Global

💧 Source aims to market the world’s first renewable drinking water system. Clean, safe, made entirely off-grid, and available almost anywhere in the world.

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Isle Utilities runs the Trial Reservoir, a pot of money that funds water-technology pilots and is repaid only when a utility agrees to adopt the technology if the trial succeeds. The United Kingdom consultancy, founded in 2012, ties pilot funding directly to adoption, the step where most water innovation stalls.

What would it enable if water entrepreneurs could deploy their best ideas in weeks instead of decades? That’s what we’ll explore today (and how that’s even possible)…

with 🎙️ Piers Clark – Chairman and Founder of Isle Utilities

💧 Isle Utilities aims to bring new technologies to life by connecting expertise, investment, and inspired ideas across the globe.

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Microbial Fuel Cells represent a tremendous opportunity to tap into the hidden energy of wastewater. But beyond that, they could also turn the way we operate our plants on its head!

What if your microorganisms told you live and 24/7 how they feel and what your effluent looks like?

with 🎙️ Carol Maxwell – CEO & Director of MICROrganic Technologies and a Founding Member of ENYA Funds 1, 2, &3

with 🎙️ Brent Solina – CTO of MICROrganic Technologies

💧 MICROrganic Technologies builds a Microbial Fuel Cell platform that aims to change the way the world deals with wastewater.

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Water may well represent less than 1% of the World’s GDP, but it heavily affects the other 99%, turning it into a major economic risk.

Why and How? Let’s review!

with 🎙️ Nicola Lei Ravello – Author and Founder of White Stag Investing

💧 White Stag Investing is a research platform for responsible investments, focusing on sustainability as a source of value and stability in the long term.

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Imagine H2O is a non-profit water innovation accelerator founded in 2009 out of Harvard Business School and run from San Francisco. It began as a business plan competition, then evolved to help water startups win customers and capital, and to push utilities toward faster technology adoption. The organization invests directly too, recently co-investing US$875K in CivilGrid.

Why and How? Let’s review!

with 🎙️ Scott Bryan – President of Imagine H2O

💧 Imagine H2O is the world leading Water Innovation Accelerator with $800+M raised in early-stage funding and 1.1 billion people (and counting) served.

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Mazarine Ventures treats water as a risk to underwrite, deploying a US$60M impact fund into early-stage startups that cut water quality and quantity exposure across industrial and municipal value chains. The Chicago venture firm, founded in 2018, writes pre-seed and seed checks and backs founders whose tools let any customer measure their own water risk.

Why and How? Let’s review!

with 🎙️ John Robinson – Partner & Co-Founder at Mazarine Ventures

💧 Mazarine is an impact investor backing young technology companies with innovations that address some aspects of water risk, including quality and quantity.

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Xylem Innovation Labs brings outside water technology to market through two tracks, accelerating early-stage startups and signing later-stage ones to reseller, licensing, and white-label deals that route their products through Xylem’s own sales channels. The labs sit inside Xylem, a roughly US$8.6 billion water company that has bought 22 businesses since 2012, so partnering to reach customers marks a deliberate second lane alongside acquiring.

Why and How? Let’s review!

with 🎙️ Sivan Zamir – VP Xylem Innovation Labs

💧 Xylem is one of the largest water and wastewater technology company globally and follows the simple motto: “Let’s solve water”

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Cambi runs the thermal hydrolysis process (THP), high-pressure steam that breaks down sewage sludge before digestion so wastewater plants make more biogas and far less biosolids. The Norwegian firm trades on Euronext Oslo as CAMBI.OL and acquired the Veolia Water Technologies thermal hydrolysis portfolio in 2022, consolidating the technology it pioneered.

What’s inside these appealing thermal hydrolysis processes? Let’s review!

with 🎙️ Eirik Fadnes – CEO at Cambi Group

💧 Cambi is on a mission to turn sludge into resources thanks to Thermal Hydrolysis Processes (THP)

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BlueTech Forum 2022’s Theme was straightforward: Radical Collaboration for Regeneration. I got to chat with 6 industry leaders about their take at the matter!

with:

🎙️ Menno Holterman (President & CEO @ Nijhuis Saur Industries)

🎙️ Snehal Desai (EVP & Chief Growth and Sustainability Officer @ Evoqua Water Technologies)

🎙️ Ralph Exton (Chief Marketing & Chief Digital Officer @ SUEZ – Water Technologies & Solutions)

🎙️ Kimberly Kupiecki (Director & Global Leader Sustainability ESG, Advocacy, Communications @ DuPont)

🎙️ Jon LIberzon (VP & Head of Business Development @ Tomorrow Water)

🎙️ Kamakshi Sharma (Director of Marketing and Strategy @ Aquatech International)

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ZENON Environmental sold to General Electric for US$689M in 2006, an all-cash exit that capped the Canadian membrane pioneer’s 26-year run under founder Andrew Benedek. His ZeeWeed hollow-fiber technology, generating roughly US$210M in revenue at the sale, seeded today’s multi-billion-dollar membrane bioreactor market.

with 🎙️ Andrew Benedek, Executive Chairman of Anaergia, founder of Zenon and CEO for 26 years, a former member of the IWA board, and the inaugural recipient of the Lee Kwan Yew Prize.

💧 Anaergia aims to convert waste into useful resources, protect the environment, and sustain life for generations to come. Where some see waste, they see resources.

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Lithium Mining is expected to deliver the lithium-ion battery industry 500’000 metric tons a year. Sure, conventional lithium supply will grow by 300% over the next decade but that will still not be sufficient! Hence, it might be an opportunity to get creative and to look for lithium in… water. How? Let’s review.

with 🎙️ Benjamin Sparrow – CEO and Co-Founder at Saltworks Technologies

💧 Saltworks provides innovative products and solutions for industrial wastewater treatment and desalination.

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Jacobs Engineering Group runs an estimated US$3.7 billion water business as a single connected system, its One Water approach uniting drinking water, wastewater, conveyance, and industrial water under one global team instead of treating each in isolation. The NYSE-listed firm frames that integrated water-cycle management as the spine of any credible climate response, since flooding, drought, and reuse pressures move through all of it.

with 🎙️ Susan Moisio – Global Water Director at Jacobs, where she leads a team of 9,000 water professionals across all regions.

💧 Jacobs pledges to push the limits of what’s possible, continually challenging today to reinvent tomorrow.

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When it comes to the race to net zero water, Water UK leads the charge. Not only did it set ambitious goals, but also in a quite timely manner: the routemap leads to 2030! The cherry on that cake? It’s not only about “net zero.” They’re before and above all aiming for a GOOD one.

with 🎙️ Maria Manidaki – Net Zero Technical Lead and Principal Water Investment Planning Advisor at Mott MacDonald

💧 Mott MacDonald is a global engineering, management, and development consultancy, that places social outcomes at the center of all it does.

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The Asian Development Bank has put together a Screening Tool for the Energy Evaluation of Projects. As a result, it can guarantee that the water and wastewater projects it backs are fully aligned in the race to net zero water!

with 🎙️ Stephane Bessadi – Senior Procurement Specialist for the Asian Development Bank

💧 The Asian Development Bank (ADB) commits to a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Asia and Pacific Region.

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Xylem cuts wastewater carbon by attacking its biggest power draw, aeration, through Sanitaire energy-efficient aeration systems and over 4 million Flygt pumps running adaptive variable-frequency drives. The New York Stock Exchange-listed (NYSE: XYL) supplier backs these with 43 audited water-treatment product lines across pumping, biological treatment, and digital optimization.

with 🎙️ Austin Alexander – Vice President, Sustainability and Social Impact at Xylem

💧 Xylem is a leading water technology company with the famous “solving water” motto – and a finalist for this year’s Net Zero Carbon Award at the Global Water Summit

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What levers can you play on to promote greater water reuse? Well, you can act on the money side of the equation, for instance, by incentivizing the deployment of new technologies through grants and loans. But also by making the wrong behavior more expensive. Wanna find out more? Let’s review it…

with 🎙️Jon Freedman – Senior Vice President – Global Government Affairs at SUEZ WTS

💧 SUEZ WTS provides industry-leading water technology and process expertise to solve the toughest water, wastewater, and process challenges

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Have you ever attended a business meeting that seemed to drain your soul out of your body? Or happily slept in a water conference, to digest the jet lag and be in a good shape for the real conference content, aka the late drinks at the

with 🎙️ Annyse Balkwill – Founder of the LuminUS Group and Program Director for the upcoming BlueTech Forum

💧 The LuminUS Group crafts an events formula that has participants engaging, again and again, sharing with their colleagues and offering this feedback. Wanna see it applied? Make sure to attend the upcoming BlueTech Forum!

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with 🎙️ Victoria Edwards – CEO & Co-Founder of FIDO Tech

FIDO Tech detects water-network leaks at over 92% accuracy using a sensor-agnostic artificial-intelligence engine trained on 2.4 million field recordings. The system finds each leak, sizes it, and ranks it for repair, filtering the false positives that send utility crews on dry digs and attacking the non-revenue water lost across distribution networks.

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with 🎙️ Katrina Donaghy – CEO & Co-Founder of Civic Ledger

💧 Civic Ledger is an award-winning blockchain company that builds trust layer solutions for the markets of tomorrow

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with 🎙️ Christopher Gasson – Owner of Global Water Intelligence and authority on water finance and markets

💧 Global Water Intelligence is the leading publisher and events organizer serving the international water industry.

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SKion Water built the 2021 Water Company of the Year by acquiring water-technology firms worldwide, closing 20 acquisitions between 2012 and 2023. Its flagship move privatized Canadian player Ovivo for US$141.6 million in 2016, a deal it ran with Quebec pension fund CDPQ and no investment bank.

💧 SKion Water is an international water technology platform, that aims to empower water technology companies to make a difference.

Update, June 2026: this story kept compounding. Three years, a $1.4 billion turnover milestone, and one $1.8 billion carve-out later, I replayed all of Reinhard’s tapes against my deal database.

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with 🎙️ Antoine Walter, Podcaster in Chief at GF Piping Systems – happy to share the Water Industry Insights he collected for you over the past 6 months!

💧 19 guests shared 1’114 minutes of Wisdom in this Season 4. I dived a bit deeper into 17 of these learnings to add my pinch of salt!

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with 🎙️ Geoff Ward, CEO of Hazer Group Limited (nb: Hazer stands for “Hydrogen And Zero Emission Research)

💧 Hazer Group Limited is a pioneering company undertaking the commercialization of a low-emission hydrogen and graphite production process.

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with 🎙️ Alena Fargere, Principal at SWEN Capital Partners and co-founder of the first European investment fund dedicated to renewable gases.

💧 SWEN Capital Partners, a benchmark player in sustainable investments in private equity, just announced the first closing of its second SWEN Impact Fund for Transition (SWIFT 2). It will be a direct contribution to decarbonizing the economy and creating jobs in France.

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with 🎙️ Paul Martin, Chemical process development expert & founder of Spitfire Research.  

💧 Spitfire research is a Process development consulting company for a decarbonized future, where Paul acts as an antidote to marketing hopium and a tireless advocate for a fossil-fuel-free future.

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with 🎙️ Jonathan Rhone, President, and CEO of Axine Water Technologies 

Axine Water Technologies owns, operates, and guarantees the on-site electrochemical oxidation systems that destroy the toughest organics in industrial wastewater, a treatment-as-a-service model that drew a US$15M strategic investment from water-instrument maker Veralto in 2024. Plant operators never run the process themselves, which is the point: the best industrial wastewater system is the one a company can forget.

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with 🎙️ Kobe Nagar, CEO & Co-Founder at 374Water 

374Water destroys PFAS and other organics at over 99.99 percent using supercritical water oxidation (SCWO), pushing waste past water’s critical point at 374 degrees Celsius where contaminants mineralize in 4 to 40 seconds. Its containerized AirSCWO AS6 reactor runs energy positive, tapping the chemical energy in sludge to sustain the reaction and generate power at scale.

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with 🎙️ David Lynch, CEO & Co-Founder at Klir 

💧 Klir is building the All-In-One Operating System for Water.

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with 🎙️ Ellen Bruno, Extension Economist @ UC Berkeley 

💧 The Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Berkeley leads research and outreach on economic and policy issues relevant to California’s agriculture and natural resources.

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with 🎙️ Steven De Laet, CEO & Founder of Inopsys 

InOpSys treats hazardous pharmaceutical and chemical wastewater on-site as a one-to-one replacement for incineration, recovering palladium, zinc, and other valuable materials, and was acquired by Indaver in 2024. The Belgian scale-up, founded in 2015, raised US$9.2 million across two rounds to scale its pay-per-use Plant-on-a-Truck model.

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with 🎙️ Cesar Narvaez, CEO & Founder of NXO Engineering

💧 NXO Engineering is a deep tech startup in the Water and Sanitation industry developing a new generation of wastewater treatment plants.

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with 🎙️ Sebastian Andreassen, CCO, Director and Co-Founder of Cembrane

Cembrane makes silicon carbide ceramic membranes that turn an expensive material into the lower-cost choice for water treatment, running at high flux where polymer membranes foul and clog. Founded in Denmark in 2014, the company was acquired by Ovivo in 2021 to scale module production across Europe and North America.

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with 🎙️ Wayne Byrne, CEO of Typhon Treatment Systems

Typhon Treatment Systems raised US$5.0M in 2019 to scale mercury-free ultraviolet LED (UV-LED) disinfection reactors and run the world’s largest UV-LED installation with United Utilities, an ambitious bid to unseat the vapor-mercury lamps the water sector had relied on for 25 years. The Ireland-based startup, founded in 2014, is now defunct, dead in the commercialization chasm between a proven pilot and scaled adoption.

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with 🎙️ Ramzi Bouzerda, CEO and founder of Droople

Droople is a Swiss water-intelligence company that has raised US$4.2M since 2021 to digitize the last mile utilities leave blind, the point-of-use assets sitting past the main meter of any building. Its sensor-agnostic iLink edge device converts raw flow data into leak detection and predictive maintenance insight, the foundation of what Droople calls the Internet of Water.

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with 🎙️ Luke Butler, Director of Innovation at Qatium

💧 Qatium is a new frontier in digital water management, giving utilities of all sizes the visibility to improve network performance, identify efficiencies and ensure continuity of service.

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with 🎙️ Scott Hamilton, Researcher, Policy Advisor and author of “Sold Down the River”

💧 in “Sold Down the River,” Scott Hamilton and Stuart Kells explore how Robber Barons and Wall Street Traders Cornered Australia’s Water Market.

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with 🎙️ Walid Khoury, General Manager of Desalytics & Water Influence Guru

💧 Desalytics is a social impact investment vehicle helping solve Africa’s water challenges that ambitions to change the Water landscape in the Sub-Saharan region.

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with 🎙️ Mina Guli, CEO and Co-Founder of the Thirst Foundation, Director of the Antarctic Science Foundation, Director of the Global Water Partnership and Adventurer.

💧 The Thirst Foundation is dedicated to getting the global water crisis to the top of the agenda and driving innovation to use less water every day.

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with 🎙️ Aaron Tartakovsky, CEO and Co-Founder of Epic Cleantec  

Epic Cleantec has raised US$24.0M to recycle a building’s own wastewater into onsite water reuse for toilet flushing, cooling towers, and irrigation, treating greywater and blackwater where they are produced instead of piping them to a central plant. The San Francisco company runs this distributed treatment to relieve centralized networks as most of humanity moves into cities by 2050.

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with 🎙️ Gerald Pollack, Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington, Founding Editor-in-Chief of the WATER research journal, Executive Director of the Institute for Venture Science, and Author of – among other books – “The Fourth Phase of Water.”   

💧 The 4th Phase of Water, or Exclusion Water, is a semi-liquid or crystalline state of water that forms at the interface with hydrophilic surfaces. More on that in a second!

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with 🎙️ Henrik Hagemann is the CEO and Co-Founder of Puraffinity.   

Puraffinity strips PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) from contaminated water using a bio-based adsorbent media that selectively binds the forever chemicals conventional filters let through. The UK company has raised US$26.07M across a 2019 seed and two Series A rounds, scaling the material from lab tests toward drinking-water and industrial treatment.

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with 🎙️ Silvana Di Sabatino, Professor of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Bologna, and coordinator of the OPERANDUM project.   

💧 The OPERANDUM Project aims at delivering the tools and methods for the validation of Nature-Based Solutions as a way to enhance resilience in European rural and natural territories by reducing hydro-meteorological risks.

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with 🎙️ Marc Barra, Urban Ecologist specializing in nature-based solutions at Paris’ Agency for Biodiversity, in charge of the H2020 REGREEN project.  

💧 The REGREEN Project promotes urban livability through fostering nature-based solutions in Europe and China using evidence-based tools and improved urban governance to accelerate the transition towards green, equitable and healthy cities.

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with 🎙️ James Murray, MGSDP Manager at the Glasgow City Council  

💧 the Metropolitan Glasgow Strategic Drainage Partnership (MGSDP) thinks about and manages rainfall to end uncontrolled flooding and improve water quality.

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with 🎙️ Alan Condron, Scientific Researcher and Climate Modeller at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

💧 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is the world’s leading, independent non-profit organization dedicated to ocean research, exploration, and education.

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with 🎙️ Olivier Narbey, Senior Business Development Manager – Water Network Performance at GF Piping Systems 

💧 GF Piping System is the leading flow solutions provider across the World.

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with 🎙️ Abdulla Alshehhi, Managing Director of National Advisor Bureau Limited, CEO of Q2 General Cleaning, and Business Support Section Head at GASCO 

💧 National Advisor Bureau Limited leverages creativity and innovation to be a leading Consultant Firm For start-up businesses & Established Companies

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with 🎙️ Alexander Loucopoulos, Partner at both Sciens Capital Management and Sciens Water 

💧 Sciens Water is a research-driven investment fund that identifies uncovered, under-researched, or misunderstood opportunities in the water sector that are hence undercapitalized. 

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with 🎙️ David Lloyd Owen, Managing Director of Envisager, Columnist for Global Water Intelligence, Advisor on several boards, and author of “Global Water Funding.”

💧 In his Global Water Funding book, David Lloyd Owen discusses global progress towards fulfilling SDG 6, proposes alternative solutions to lack of funding, and examines the reasons why countries are failing at implementing safe and sustainable water and sanitation for all.

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with 🎙️ Lea Im Obersteg, Head of Global Design Thinking @ GF Piping Systems

💧 GF Piping Systems is the leading flow solutions provider across the World.

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with 🎙️ Gilles Toussaint, Founder @ GT Impact and Host of the “Mission First – Entrepreneurs for Future” podcast

💧 GT Impact strives to help Greentech companies to increase their revenue with efficient growth marketing sprints and data-driven content marketing

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Ozone diffusion moves dissolved ozone into water two ways, fine bubble diffusers on a basin floor or sidestream venturi injection, the method Mazzei has built since 1978 from its base in the United States. Fine bubble diffusion relies on bubble size, contact area, and rise time, while sidestream injection pulls a slipstream through a venturi and mixes ozone in seconds.

💧 Mazzei Injector Company is a global leader in the design, engineering, and manufacturing of venturi injectors, flash reactors, and other high-efficiency mixing technologies and ozone diffusion systems.

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with 🎙️ Hasmik Barseghyan, President of the European Youth Parliament for Water, among other strategic roles at the World Water Quality Alliance, the World Energy Council, the International Secretariat for Water, or Woman in Climate and Energy.

💧 The EYPW aims to promote youth involvement in the water sector by increasing their awareness of water resource management issues and by fostering an understanding of citizenship and democracy.

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with 🎙️ Denise E Mall, Managing Director of EnsO Earth

💧 EnsO Earth focuses on the intersection of living futures, biomimicry, circularity, and ecological design thinking to go beyond sustainable towards regenerative solutions.

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with 🎙️ Meena Sankaran, CEO and Founder of KETOS.

KETOS SHIELD, an autonomous sensor, measures water quality by detecting heavy metals down to parts-per-billion across 30+ parameters using anodic stripping voltammetry. The software intelligence rides on that hardware, which is why the company built both layers in-house after raising US$45.3M across four priced rounds since 2015.

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with 🎙️ Alice Schmidt, MBA lecturer, Adviser to the European Commission, and non-profit organizations like Extinction Rebellion, Protect our Winters, and Chair of the Board of Endeva e.V.

with 🎙️ Claudia Winkler, CEO, and co-founder of Goood Mobile, Europe’s first B-Corp Certified telecom provider, and a Founding Partner of Adjacent Possible Network.

💧 Alice and Claudia are the Authors of “the Sustainability Puzzle,” a must-read addressing how systems thinking, circularity, climate action, and social transformation can improve health, wealth, and wellbeing for all.

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EMG International, founded in 1996, treats food and beverage wastewater with its Anaerobic Fluidized Bed Digester, a sealed reactor that turns industrial effluent into biogas instead of burning power to aerate it. The American firm drew a strategic utility when TransAlta took a 30% stake in 2020 to enter waste-to-energy treatment.

💧 EMG International is a leading company in Anaerobic Wastewater treatments, with a pretty unique take on anaerobic digestion.

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with 🎙️ Michael Stanley Gallisdorfer

💧 Michael holds a Ph. D. in Geography and builds upon a unique (and multidisciplinary!) skill set, making him a Global Water expert.

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with 🎙️ Ulrike Kelm – Chair of the Women in Water and Sanitation Network

💧 The Women in Water and Sanitation Network is an active ambassador for gender equality, connecting and empowering female professionals, expanding women’s career opportunities, and increasing their visibility.

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with 🎙️ Abdelhakim El Fadil – Ph.D. Researcher and Podcast Host

💧 The “Smart Water Solutions” podcast addresses technical hints and industrial expertise to better exploit water treatment technologies.

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with 🎙️ Gaetane Suzenet – Co-Founder of the European Water Tech Accelerator

💧 The European Water Tech Accelerator aims to boost European water start-ups to drive sustainable growth in the global water sector. 

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with 🎙️ Nicola Lei Ravello – Independent investment consultant and founder of White Stag Investing

💧 White Stag Investing is a research platform for responsible investments, focusing on sustainability as a source of value and stability in the long-term.

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with 🎙️ Brian Moloney – Founder & Managing Director @ StormHarvester

💧 StormHarvester is the leading company in smart drainage systems (and more).

StormHarvester predicts sewer blockages and fatbergs before they cause overflows, and raised a $10.2M Series A in 2025 to roll the system out across Australasia and North America. The British firm reads existing network sensors with machine learning and hyperlocal weather forecasts instead of running hydraulic models, and has taken total funding to $12.56M since 2012.

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with 🎙️ Jim Lauria – VP Sales & Marketing at Mazzei Injector Company

& with 🎙️ Adam Tank – Director, Software Solutions at Transcend Water

💧 Adam & Jim are the co-hosts of the “Water We Talking About?” Podcast

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with 🎙️ Björn Otto – Business Unit and Marketing Director @ Hager + Elsässer

💧 H+E is one of the world’s leading suppliers of water and wastewater technology with more than 30,000 turnkey plants in over 130 countries around the globe.

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with 🎙️ Matthew Silver – Founder & CEO @ Cambrian Innovation

Cambrian Innovation sells treated water and recovered energy by the gallon through its Water-Energy Purchase Agreement, financing the plant up front so industrial customers pay nothing to install and carry no project risk. The model is backed by $17.2M raised in 2019 led by Spring Lane Capital, and the 2020 Baswood acquisition that doubled Cambrian’s installed base.

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Elemental Excelerator, now Elemental Impact, is a nonprofit climate-tech accelerator founded in 2012 that channels catalytic capital, drawn from 47 million dollars under management, into early-stage water and climate startups to push them toward commercial scale. Its water portfolio runs through companies like Capture6, Cambrian Innovation, and Verdi, all backed across funding rounds rather than for an equity return.

💧 Elemental is a non-profit Growth Accelerator supporting entrepreneurs who are building world-changing companies.

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