(don't) Waste Water! | Water Tech to Solve the World

H2O Innovation just bought back the first WaterHub: a sewer mining, water reuse plant on Emory University's campus in Atlanta, built by the team H2O later acquired, yet never owned by it. So why would a company that has sold more than a thousand water treatment systems start buying them back? Guillaume Clairet, COO of H2O Innovation, walks me through the deal.

He calls it BBUOO: Buy Back, Upgrade, Own, Operate. And it's a lesson in the economics of owning a water utility asset: who pays for the plant, who owns it, who runs it, and who gets the upside when it is upgraded.

H2O Innovation is a North American water treatment company that has sold more than a thousand systems and provides operations and maintenance to over 600. Since acquiring NextEra Distributed Water in October 2024, under Ember Infrastructure's backing, it also develops, owns and operates water reuse plants called WaterHubs on campuses across North America.

Guillaume Clairet is COO of H2O Innovation and leads its shift from selling water treatment systems to owning and operating them, from the NextEra Distributed Water acquisition to the first deployment of its $200 million blue loan.

🌶️ KEY SPICES 🌶️

🏛️ Who actually owned the Emory WaterHub for ten years (not Emory, not its developer, not yet H2O Innovation)
🚽 How sewer mining works: an 18-inch campus sewer line, up to 400,000 gallons a day, a moving bed biofilm reactor, a greenhouse and 4,400 feet of purple pipe
💰 The $200 million blue loan with a consortium including Scotiabank, and why Guillaume still says the team matters more than the capital
⚡ Buy a plant on Thursday, cash your first revenue on Friday: why a buyback beats the 18 months to three years of a greenfield water reuse project
🌱 Do the hydroponic gardens actually treat the water? Guillaume's honest answer
📈 Five buyback deals in active discussion, $20 to $150 million each, and the water investing returns he calls fair (nobody makes a 75% IRR)

🥜 IN A NUTSHELL 🥜

What does BBUOO mean?
Buy Back, Upgrade, Own, Operate: H2O Innovation buys a water plant it already knows, upgrades it, and runs it as the long-term owner.

What is sewer mining?
Sewer mining taps an existing sewer line and treats the wastewater on site into non-potable water, which at Emory feeds the steam plant, the chillers and a few dorm toilets.

Why does ownership matter in the economics of owning a water utility asset?
From 2015 on, the people who designed and ran the Emory plant were not the people who owned it, while an owner-operator can fund upgrades such as more purple pipe or an MBBR-to-MBR conversion, and share the gains with the customer.

Is buying back water plants a good water investing thesis?
Guillaume argues it is faster than greenfield, with revenue from the day after closing and simpler due diligence on systems H2O engineered or operated, as long as returns stay fair rather than squeezing the customer.

What's next for H2O Innovation?
Over the next 12 months, Guillaume expects new greenfield projects, new acquired plants and new technology acquisitions, after bestUV joined the portfolio in May.

#️⃣ Mentioned Links #️⃣

H2O Innovation - https://www.h2oinnovation.com
My December episode with Guillaume, 25 Years of Acquisitions Built This Water Tech Powerhouse - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOvJK8BnOJo

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

How do you manage an aquifer nobody can see, and what changes when iFlux measures how its groundwater moves?

iFlux is a Belgian company that measures how groundwater moves: its speed, its direction, and how much contamination travels with it. Most tools only give snapshots, a water table level here, a nitrate concentration there, while groundwater flows anywhere from 2 centimeters to 2 meters a day. So I sat down with its CEO to find out what measuring that movement changes.

Christian Montag joined iFlux in 2023 as operations director, coming from lean consulting with no background in hydrogeology, raised the round that brought in PureTerra as lead investor, then took over as CEO from co-founder Tim.

🌶️ KEY SPICES 🌶️
🌊 Flux versus flow: cover half a hose with your thumb and the same water comes out at a different speed, which is what happens to groundwater squeezing through sand and sediment
🗺️ My dad's 35-kilometer pollution plume in eastern France, and why every new sampling campaign drifted from what his model predicted
📍 Why PFAS sitting still is a smaller risk than the same PFAS moving toward a river, a town or a nature reserve
💧 A managed aquifer recharge site in the Netherlands, where river water filters through the ground before it becomes drinking water, and the three questions it needed answered
🏭 Groundwater pumping on a worst-case permit: why an industrial site may pump in the wrong places for years and still prefer not to know
✅ How flux data let one industrial site prove its cleanup had worked and switch to monitoring, saving 90 to 95% of the cost
🔬 3.6 million euros from the European Innovation Council (EIC), and full-scale deployments at three drinking water utilities
🤝 Why environmental consultants are iFlux's route to scale, and whether its data platform helps them or competes with them
⛏️ Oil and gas, mining and EIT Raw Materials: the markets I kept pushing Christian toward
📈 The pitch: 27% growth last year, 75% targeted this year, and a 5 million raise that could open up to 7 million
🏷️ The exit landscape, from AEM buying Van Essen Instruments to Saur buying Imageau, and why strategic buyers do their R&D through M&A

🥜 IN A NUTSHELL 🥜
What does iFlux measure? The speed and direction of groundwater movement, and the mass of contamination moving through the subsoil with it.
Why isn't a good groundwater model enough? Because from the day you release a model into the real world, the real world drifts away from it, and flux lets you calibrate with a vector instead of a single point.
Who buys it? Industrial sites, drinking water utilities and cities, mostly through environmental consultants, of which iFlux wants to focus on two handfuls out of about 30 big ones worldwide.
What is the 5 million for? Commercial rollouts through partner ecosystems in each country, more sensor development, and data-driven models that move from measuring to predicting.
When should iFlux pay its own bills? Christian aims for a self-sustaining state in 2028.

#️⃣ Mentioned Links #️⃣
📌 iFlux, Christian's company: https://iflux.be/
📌 Email Christian: christian@iflux.be

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Why do water professionals still trust dowsing rods, and how did a magician expose them?

So I traced dowsing from a coconut in an Indian field to the UK's water companies, an American engineering firm's podcast and the drillers of Australia. Then I looked at what the controlled tests say, from a magician's trial in Sydney to Kassel, and at what people really buy when they pay a dowser. It leads to my conversation with Christian Montag, CEO of iFlux, on measuring the water under our feet.

The figures come from the sources named in the video: Hans-Dieter Betz, the US Air Force Institute of Technology, James Randi's 1980 test, Kassel 1990, the US Geological Survey, the New York Times and the United Nations.

🌶️ KEY SPICES 🌶️
🔮 Dowsing at work: in 2017, 10 of the 12 big UK water companies said their engineers used rods
🎙️ Brown and Caldwell's Engineering Legends podcast hosted a dowser who "map dowses" from his office
🍷 Mark Mondavi: 40 years of water witching, more than 100 wells, and a wine label called the Divining Rod
🕳️ Water well drilling in Montgomery, Vermont: seven wells picked by hydrogeologists came up short, a dowser's eighth gave 300 gallons a minute (over 1,100 liters)
🎩 James Randi offered $10,000 in Sydney in 1980: 111 tries, 15 hits, about 12% against 10% for pure luck
🧠 Confirmation bias: the wells that worked get retold, the dry holes never do
🧽 Groundwater is not an underground river: an aquifer is porous material soaked like a sponge
💵 A geologist quoted $6,500 for a range and a probability, a dowser about $1,400 for a cross on the ground
☢️ Montgomery's eighth well also held uranium: 76 parts per billion, nearly three times the state limit

🥜 IN A NUTSHELL 🥜
Does dowsing work? In field reports it seems to, but in controlled tests dowsers score barely better than chance.
What are the tricks? Water is almost everywhere, the hands move the rods (the ideomotor effect), confirmation bias, and the wrong picture of what lies underground.
Why do professionals still pay for it? Because the underground is invisible, and the dowser sells certainty where the scientist sells a probability.
Why does it matter? Groundwater is about 99% of the liquid freshwater on Earth, and once polluted, it tends to stay polluted.

#️⃣ Mentioned Links #️⃣
📌 Interius Solutions: https://academy.interius.io/watertech-marketing-system
Use code ANTOINE15 for 15% off the Interius Academy, their WaterTech Marketing System
(and yes, Björn only pays me if you sign up 😅)

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Do Water CEOs Get Fired for Their Results, or for Company Politics?

When Saur pushed out Patrick Blethon in October 2026, I noticed he had brought former colleagues into his executive team... just like Sabrina Soussan before SUEZ let her go. So I traced 30 years of water CEOs, 659 tenures at 110 companies, to see what gets a CEO fired: results, gender, age, degrees, friends, or corporate politics.

Every number comes from annual reports, filings, Global Water Intelligence, the Wayback Machine, press articles and LinkedIn, and the research archive is right here: https://dww.show/trust-me-bro/

🌶️ KEY SPICES 🌶️
🚪 Succession planning, insider or outsider: CEOs hired from outside the company were fired about twice as often as internal promotions, yet revenue grew a little faster and operating margins improved more under them (1.8 points up, against 0.2 down under insiders)
🏛️ Corporate governance: state-controlled and private equity-owned water companies fire about twice as often as other owners, but 16 of their 22 firings come from four companies, Sabesp, Copasa, Acea and Saur
🗳️ Company politics, literally: at state-controlled water companies, 8 of 14 firings came within a year of a new governor or mayor, like Sabesp's new CEO, named 26 days after São Paulo's new governor took office
🔁 Change management: outsiders are appointed to trigger change and appoint 3.2 newcomers to the executive team in their first two years, against 2.1 for insiders, but those who appoint four or more are fired 42% of the time against 25%, while the 18 insiders who changed as much were never fired
🎓 Gender, age, nationality, an MBA, a PhD or an elite school: none of them predicts a firing, and the degrees don't even buy a reliable starting-pay premium
💸 The price of an outsider: more than a third of outside hires in US and UK filings got a payment to join, and three in four firings with known terms came with severance, a median disclosed payout of about $2 million
🤝 Bringing your friends: outsiders hire six times more former colleagues than insiders, like Patrick Blethon bringing Xavier Savigny from Otis to Saur, but once the CEO's own background is accounted for, the friends add no statistically relevant firing risk
📉 A bad last year: a loss, a profit warning, an operational failure or a scandal preceded 41% of firings, against 15% of other exits, as when Xylem cut its forecast in July 2013 and Gretchen McClain was out six weeks later

🥜 IN A NUTSHELL 🥜
What gets a water CEO fired, if not their results? A bad last year raises the odds for every CEO, but what sets outsiders apart is a power shift above them: under the board or chairman who appointed them, they were fired 3 times per 100 years in the job, against 7 under a new one, while insiders stayed at 1 either way.
Do fired CEOs do a worse job? No. The shares of companies that fired their CEO beat their market by 3.4 points a year, against 3.3 when the CEO retired as planned.
Should you follow your former boss onto their new executive team? Maybe, but know that when a CEO is fired, half the people they appointed leave the executive committee within two years, against 22% after a planned retirement.
What does it mean for succession planning? Knowing water helps, but knowing the company helps more: outsiders who kept most of the team they inherited were fired only 10% of the time, and CEOs hired from rival water companies were fired in 18% of known departures, against 11% for internal promotions.

#️⃣ Mentioned Links #️⃣]
📌 My investigation on Saur and Patrick Blethon's departure: https://youtu.be/50ZvH3Xv3SE

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Work with me: antoine@dww.show
Get a slot directly in my calendar: https://dww.show/meet

Why Was Patrick Blethon Fired From Saur, Five Days After Its Sale Was Called Off?
On October 7, Saur announced that Patrick Blethon was leaving with immediate effect, after nearly seven years leading France's third-largest water company. In June, Menno Holterman and the Nijhuis executive team had already been pushed out, and on October 2, EQT had reportedly dropped its plan to reduce its stake. So I went through what Patrick and Menno built, how Saur paid for that growth, and what remains unfinished now that they are gone.

🌶️ KEY SPICES 🌶️
🗓️ The timeline, from the March 2026 Morgan Stanley mandate to explore selling Saur's municipal business, to Patrick Blethon fired five days after EQT reportedly backed off
🏚️ Bouygues, PAI, a €2.3 billion leveraged buyout and the 2013 debt restructuring: why Saur came to EQT in 2018 wary of debt
🧭 How Patrick Blethon used the loss of Nîmes to Veolia to make Saur less dependent on French municipal water
🏭 Nijhuis, Aqua-Chem and Veolia's Mobile Water Services for about €190 million: the industrial leg that beat its €500 million target a year early
💶 €75 million of capex against €63 million of EBITDA in 2023, net debt up from €1.24 to €1.4 billion, and a 2024 downgrade below investment grade
📉 2025: industrial sales down 9% to €496 million, a cyber incident, and a negative Fitch outlook in May 2026, while the municipal business carried the group

🥜 IN A NUTSHELL 🥜
Why was Patrick Blethon fired from Saur? Saur says its strategy is unchanged, but my reading is that the test applied to that strategy changed: Patrick could point to a bigger group with a real industrial leg, while the shareholders asked when that growth would turn into cash, and into an exit.
Did Patrick Blethon's strategy work? Largely, yes: industrial sales reached €545 million in 2024, a year ahead of the target, and that business cushioned Saur in 2023 when energy costs hit the French municipal side.
Why did a growing Saur need cash? Because industrial contracts and mobile rental fleets are paid for upfront and earn back over time, and rising interest rates made that growth more expensive to finance.
Who replaces Patrick Blethon at Saur? Didier Michaud-Daniel, previously chair of the supervisory committee, becomes executive chairman, and Jean-Paul Michel takes day-to-day responsibility as interim CEO.
What is the point of being third? At home, Saur will always build behind Veolia and SUEZ, so the question is how it grows out of the giants' shadow without growing beyond what its owners are ready to finance.

#️⃣ Mentioned Links #️⃣
📌 My July article on Menno Holterman's departure: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/menno-holterman-story-antoine-walter-3q9re/
📌 My investigation on SOURCE: https://youtu.be/NQDWrLDPBuM

00:00 Patrick Blethon Fired as Saur CEO
03:24 Saur's Leveraged Buyout and Debt Restructuring
08:25 Patrick Blethon's Plan Beyond France
13:34 Private Equity Exit: EQT Sells Half of Saur
17:01 Cash Flow vs Profit: Why Saur Needed Blue Bonds
25:19 Slowdown and Menno Holterman's Exit
29:25 Exit Talks: How Patrick Blethon Got Fired
34:58 Third Behind Veolia and SUEZ: What Now for Saur?

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.