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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?

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🙌 My WEFTEC 2026 coverage is sponsored by 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 😅)

Will AI Replace Water and Wastewater Operators, or Become Their New Co-Worker?

AI was everywhere I looked at WEFTEC 2026 in New Orleans, so I spent three days on the show floor asking 14 companies what artificial intelligence can really do for water utilities and wastewater treatment plants, from leak detection to water treatment automation. That gave me 17 interviews, one nerdy question I kept asking (what's under the hood?), and a pretty good idea of what the end of the water operator as we know it could look like.

🌶️ KEY SPICES 🌶️
🛠️ Cox Research has 4 engineers running a workflow that would take 20 to 30, because its AI turns a pump spec into schematics, a bill of materials and a quote in minutes
🔬 Nyad turns a microscope photo from the wastewater lab into operating advice, with vision models that only ship once they score 90% or more against human microbiologists
🛰️ ASTERRA's satellites tell water leak detection crews where to look, and TransientDetect has recorded over 250 million pressure waves to keep pipes from breaking in the first place
🤖 Zed, AVA, Nelson and Eddy: the AI agents and assistants that Pani, Aquasight, MentorAPM and EAOS put next to the operator, and why MCP (Model Context Protocol) came up on a utility booth
🔐 RAG, fine-tuning or a frontier model behind an API: where your data goes, and why Rockwell Automation's cybersecurity team wants your control network (SCADA included) to keep running when IT is under attack
🎓 The 18-year-old who learned more in 4 days with an AI-built football playbook than in 4 months with the certification binder, and what it means for wastewater operator training
💸 Vibe coding, one founder who replaced $2,500 a month of software in a weekend, and an AI water startup that expects to break even within its pre-seed round

🥜 IN A NUTSHELL 🥜
Will AI replace wastewater treatment plant operators? No. The teams I met build for the licensed operator, who stays in charge and gets help with the 2 a.m. questions, the work orders and the microscope.
Is water AI just ChatGPT with a logo? The chat window is often a big model called through an API. The value sits behind it, in the utility's data, the specialist models and the tools an AI agent can use.
Is it safe to connect AI to a water treatment plant? It depends on the access you give it: Pani stays read-only, Nyad starts with no plant connection at all, and Rockwell wants a control network that runs without IT.
Can a water utility vibe code its own software? For a personal tool, yes. For something the whole organization depends on, somebody still has to maintain it once the summer intern is gone.
Is AI in water another AI bubble? Partly, since not every use will stick. But after three full days of it, I'm betting AI is here to stay in the water industry.

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰
00:00 AI for Water at WEFTEC 2026
04:01 AI Engineering and Field Inspections
07:38 AI Assistants for Water Utilities
12:06 Wastewater AI: Microscopy and Modeling
23:43 AI Leak Detection and Prevention
32:36 AI Water Asset Management
38:24 RAG, Fine-Tuning and Data Privacy
46:16 Vibe Coding vs Utility Software
54:00 AI Agents and MCP
1:00:21 Water Utility Cybersecurity
1:11:06 AI Copilots for Wastewater Operators
1:14:41 AI Training for Water Operators
1:19:34 AI Water Startups and Funding
1:24:02 Future of AI in Water
1:25:56 WEFTEC Booth Swag and Bribes

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Is Data Center Water Use a Threat to Your Town, or the Money Its Water System Has Been Waiting For?

Data center water use has become one of the loudest arguments about AI, from the one-bottle-per-prompt claim to US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick arguing both sides on The Daily Show. So I looked into where that water goes, what the tech giants' promises are worth, and how smart towns make the AI boom pay for better water systems.

With insights from Ralph Exton, Executive Director of the Water Environment Federation (WEF), which founded the Water-AI Nexus Center of Excellence with Amazon and other partners.

🌶️ KEY SPICES 🌶️
🏘️ In The Dalles, Oregon, Google used a third of the city's water in 2024, and letting it grow meant new wells, storage and pumping that Google would build and then hand over to the city
🔍 Hinkley, Flint and Erin Brockovich's data center initiative show why neighbors want a baseline before construction, results they can check, and someone responsible for fixing problems
🚰 "Water positive" put to the test: Amazon's $2.2 million for leak detection in Orange County, and why a saving only counts if it reaches the same water system a data center draws from
❄️ Air cooling, treated wastewater or warmer-water designs: how to cut data center water use when thermodynamics offers no free lunch
🤖 AI inside water utilities: why operators must stay the human in the loop, after the FBI and EPA warned of attacks on water control equipment in at least seven states
💵 From Douglas County, Georgia, to Ralph's call to cut the ribbon at the new pump station rather than the data center: how the AI boom can finally fund the water projects communities need

🥜 IN A NUTSHELL 🥜
How much water does AI actually use? It depends on what the number counts (one response, training a model, or a whole building) and on whether that water goes back to its source or evaporates.
When does data center water use become a local problem? When one customer needs a big share of a town's supply, because someone then has to find more water, build the equipment and keep the taps running on the hottest day.
Can a data center really give water back? Yes, if the savings reach the same water system it draws from, anytime, and preserve more water than its infrastructure withdraws.
Who should control AI inside a water utility? The utility, with trained operators who stay the human in the loop for any change to pumps, valves or chemical feeds.
Who pays if the promised demand never arrives? That's the hard part of the deal, which is why utilities consider charges for unused capacity, and why water has to be on the table in the first six months of a data center project.

#️⃣ Mentioned Links #️⃣
📌 AI 101 for Water Professionals, the free 90-minute course by Watura and WEF: https://www.watura.us/courses/ai-101-for-water-professionals
📌 My previous video on the water-and-energy tradeoff of data center cooling: https://youtu.be/1o-cdb8xzZ0
📌 Water-AI Nexus, Principles for Sustainable Water Use by Data Centers: https://water-ai-nexus.org/insight-report/
📌 Erin Brockovich's data center initiative: https://www.brockovichdatacenter.com/

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Thermal desalination lost the water industry to reverse osmosis on one number: boiling seawater takes about ten times more energy than pushing it through a membrane. So why is one of the 20 teams left in the XPRIZE Water Scarcity competition still betting on heat?

Desolenator is a Dutch water tech company that desalinates with heat instead of pressure, running on solar energy and industrial waste heat rather than grid electricity. Its hybrid panel harvests electricity and thermal energy from the same sunlight, recovers the latent heat of its own steam, and can run to zero liquid discharge, leaving salt instead of brine. Four patents, and a scale-up from 25 to 100, then 1,000 cubic metres a day.

William Janssen built the first proof of principle in his living room and kept the distilled water in his freezer as proof. He won 100,000 euros at Climate Launchpad, was picked up by the Dubai Future Accelerator and Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, and delivered plants in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Desolenator is chaired by Paddy Padmanathan, who led ACWA Power for 18 years and made it the world's largest desalination company.

🌶️ KEY SPICES 🌶️
🌡️ Why thermal desalination's ten-times energy penalty disappears when the heat is "chaleur fatale", the waste heat industry pays to throw away
🔌 How a phone call about data centre cooling became patent number four: one heat pump worked from BOTH sides, lifting 50°C exhaust to the 70°C a distiller needs
🌱 Why farmers around Al Ain are salting the aquifer they irrigate from, and how zero liquid discharge breaks that loop
📉 Paddy Padmanathan on the cost curve he signed himself: $2.50 per cubic metre in 2005, $0.46 on his last ACWA Power contract in 2023, and why it still isn't solved
🏆 What William answers when asked point blank whether Desolenator wins the XPRIZE: two words no founder is supposed to say

🥜 IN A NUTSHELL 🥜
What is thermal desalination, and how does it differ from reverse osmosis?
Thermal desalination makes fresh water by evaporating seawater and condensing the steam, the way rain works, while reverse osmosis pushes seawater through a fine membrane under pressure. Reverse osmosis uses roughly ten times less energy and won the municipal market, but it needs electricity, while thermal desalination runs on the low-grade heat industry already wastes.

Can solar energy power desalination?
Yes. Desolenator's panels harvest electricity and heat from the same sunlight and buffer both, which is how its Dubai plant hit the benchmark set by Dubai Electricity and Water Authority: 10 cubic metres a day, 20 hours a day, year-round.

What is zero liquid discharge, and why does it matter for water scarcity?
Zero liquid discharge recovers all the water from a stream and leaves solid salt instead of brine. It matters where brine has nowhere to go: around Al Ain, farmers desalinate saline groundwater and flush the concentrate back into the aquifer, making it saltier each year.

Is thermal desalination a good water investment in 2026?
It depends on scale and free heat. Desolenator draws its own fence at 100 million litres a day, above which membranes win. Its CapEx runs higher than conventional quotes and its OpEx dramatically lower, so the economics favour industrial sites with waste heat or land for solar, and buyers needing zero liquid discharge.

#️⃣ Mentioned Links #️⃣
Desolenator - desolenator.com
Why Elon Musk's Desalination Vision is Failing - watch on YouTube

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FREE TOOL ➡️ Get your water tech pitch reviewed: https://app.leviathandata.io/pitch-deck-analyzer
More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

See how the Northumbrian Water Innovation Festival brings together creative minds in Newcastle for collaborative problem solving.
Watch the energy of this unique event.

This episode takes you inside the Northumbrian Water Innovation Festival to show how large groups tackle industry challenges through structured collaboration.
You will see firsthand how participants move from concept to practical solutions using specific frameworks like sprint tents and the Crystal Ball method.
Whether you are interested in corporate innovation or local Newcastle events, this footage highlights the collaborative process in action.
It is designed for professionals and curious viewers who want to observe how collaborative problem-solving works in a real-world setting, moving beyond traditional meeting rooms to open, creative environments.
If you enjoyed seeing how an Innovation Festival operates, subscribe for weekly industry event recaps, and let us know in the comments if you prefer structured workshops or free-form brainstorming sessions.

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣
Design Thinking with Lea im Obersteg: https://dww.show/who/lea-im-obersteg/

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️
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🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰
00:00 The Northumbrian Water Innovation Festival
03:55 Inside Tent 15
04:32 Design Sprint Crash Course
06:13 South Bend Smart Sewer Origin
09:18 UK Spill Crisis Context
11:25 Power of Ten Ambition
13:30 Reality Check and Tease
14:27 Beetroot Break
15:21 Adoption Workshop Takeaways
20:39 Why Tents Work
21:23 NUAR Billion Dollar Story
24:55 Festival Scale and Impact
28:50 Wrap Up and Reflections
30:31 Free Tool

About this Podcast:
Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water podcast, the leading podcast for water industry professionals, investors, and entrepreneurs seeking deep insights into water tech innovation, investment trends, and strategic moves in the sector. Host Antoine Walter blends his technical expertise with sharp business acumen to deliver weekly episodes featuring candid conversations with C-suite executives, detailed analysis of major water industry developments, and practical insights for water tech startups and seasoned players alike.

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