Today, I encourage you to take this episode COMPLETELY, it gets better as it develops. Whenever you can, find 45 minutes in the coming days and watch the full video.

Pay close attention to our guest. He is one of the most inspiring and insightful people I’ve met in the last three years, which is exactly why I invited him to join the conversation.

For years, when I told friends China was probably handling water better than most of Europe, they looked at me like I’d lost it. The image is sticky for them: smog, polluted rivers, opaque industry. It takes a while to update.

China sells water rights. They’ve been doing it for a decade.

This was the moment that genuinely surprised me, and David told me it surprised Alejandro Sturniolo too when they discussed it last year.

About ten years ago, China set up what is effectively a water rights exchange market, a public, government-owned marketplace where the right to use water is allocated by basin, tied to the GDP a province or city has committed to producing.

If your industrial activity needs more water than your allocation, you don’t just pump more. You buy the right from a neighboring province in the same basin.

It’s not identical to the “water positive” or water credit frameworks emerging globally, but the underlying philosophy is the same: water is a finite resource with a price, and you cannot consume it faster than the system says you can.

China implemented this at national scale a decade before most of the world started seriously talking about it.

The reason is brutally simple.

A thousand years ago they were already digging tunnels to move water around. Today they’re pricing it into the economy.

Groundwater is, for industry, essentially banned.

In most countries, regulating groundwater is a political nightmare. In China, for industrial use, it’s mostly settled: forbidden.

Agriculture can still apply for permits, but with strict caps.

The default assumption in industrial planning is that you will not be touching the aquifer.

Try imagining that conversation in your own country.

The world’s largest Zero Liquid Discharge market is in China

This was the part I most wanted to flag for our community. China is the world’s largest manufacturer of petrochemicals, steel, cement, and most of the heavy industries that produce nasty wastewater.

Combine that with the water rights system above and the groundwater ban, and you get a regulatory environment where industrial sites have one realistic option: Minimum Liquid Discharge (MLD) or Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD).

David estimates that China holds 60–70% of the global market for the core ZLD technologies, particularly evaporation and crystallization.

If you’re buying a ZLD system anywhere in the world right now, the heart of it was very likely engineered or built in China.

There’s a fascinating bit of behavioral history here.

A decade ago, plants would build a ZLD system to pass inspection, then quietly bypass it because operating costs were too high.

The fix wasn’t a better fine, it was making the owner of the company personally liable, including jail time.

As David put it: “the market is much worse than the money.”

Once that became real, the operations market caught up to the construction market, and the technology kept improving because it had to.

That’s a regulatory design lesson worth sitting with.

Landfills are essentially gone. Power plants now compete for garbage.

Around a decade ago, China subsidized power generation from waste burning, not solar, not wind, but garbage-to-energy specifically. The goal was to make burying waste economically irrational.

It worked so well that the subsidy was removed two or three years ago because it was no longer needed.

Today, power plants in different cities compete on price to acquire garbage from one another, because without garbage they can’t generate power and they can’t earn margin. Landfills have been almost entirely closed.

The leachate technology market that used to exist around landfills has shifted to dewatering leachate from pre-incineration processes.

David was honest about the gap: China is still behind countries like Germany or Finland on garbage classification at the household level. That’s a real weakness. But the disposal end of the system has been re-engineered in a way most Western cities are nowhere near.

The honest weakness: hyper-competitiveness eating itself

I asked David directly what China is not doing well, because lately I struggle to find weaknesses, and I don’t trust that instinct.

His answer was surprisingly self-critical, and I think important.

The problem is mentality. When a technology matures in Europe, maybe 5–10 companies manufacture it.

When it matures in China, 10,000 do. And then those 10,000 don’t compete on quality or R&D; they compete on price, racing each other to the floor.

David called it “out of logic competitive.” It hurts foreign competitors, yes, but it also hurts Chinese entrepreneurs like him who want to invest margin into next-generation R&D.

You cannot fund the future on zero-margin commodity pricing.

The government is aware and has tried to push back with policy, but he doesn’t think those measures are working yet.

This is the most honest “constructive critique” of the Chinese water industry I’ve heard from someone inside it, and it tracks with what I see at trade shows.

Why he’s betting on tubular ceramic membranes

David’s company, Conceptech, makes tubular ceramic membranes, and the reasoning behind the bet says a lot about where he thinks the industry is heading.

His starting concern is one most of the industry doesn’t like to talk about: the membranes we currently rely on — PES, PVDF, PP, polyamide — have a manufacturing process that is not environmentally friendly, requires heavy chemical use, generates significant wastewater, and produces modules that at end-of-life become waste themselves.

We are, in his words, using non-sustainable technology to purify water and calling it sustainability.

Ceramic membranes are made from earth and high-temperature firing. After their service life, you can return them to the oven and remake them.

The catch right now is cost — ceramic is roughly 15–20 times more expensive per square meter than PVDF — which limits adoption to applications where stability matters more than price (pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, certain industrial reuse).

Tubular vs. flat-sheet matters too.

1. Flat-sheet ceramic is cheaper to manufacture and works submerged like an MBR, but every maintenance event means draining the tank.

2. Tubular runs inside-out like a reverse osmosis skid — higher membrane cost per square meter, but lower CAPEX on infrastructure and dramatically lower OPEX over time. For long lifecycle thinking, tubular wins.

The challenge is making good tubular ceramic at low cost, which is where Conseptec’s manufacturing innovation (the one that won them a 2024 Sustainability Award in Saudi Arabia as well as below in latest WEX Global 2026 in which I was part of the judge) sits: a precision-controlled heating process that drops energy consumption — the dominant cost driver, since raw material is under 20% of total cost — significantly.

And here’s the wedge that’s opening the market for them faster than expected: PFAS regulation in the EU and UK.

Once you’re inside a PFAS-free requirement, ceramic stops looking expensive. It starts looking inevitable.

Continue the discussion

I want to leave them as open questions rather than tidy conclusions:

1. Lifecycle cost analysis is still a rare skill.

David and I agreed that maybe 1–2% of professionals genuinely run a real CAPEX-plus-OPEX-plus-end-of-life analysis.

Most people pick the cheaper sticker price and call it a day. Until that changes, sustainable technologies will keep losing tenders they should win.

2. Regulatory design beats technology cheerleading.

China didn’t get to a functioning ZLD market by inventing better evaporators.

It got there by making non-compliance personally costly to executives, banning the easy alternative (groundwater), and pricing water at the basin level. Technology followed.

3. The “today’s tools are the final answer” trap is real.

David said something I keep turning over: he doesn’t believe the membranes we use now will still be in use in 300 years.

The honest entrepreneurial question isn’t “what’s the best product on the shelf?” it’s “what does the shelf look like in fifty years, and am I building toward it or away from it?”

4. And finally: keep updating your map of China.

The country David described is not the country most Western water professionals describe at conferences.

If your mental model is more than a few years old, it’s wrong. Go visit. Talk to people like David. Be willing to be surprised.

Thanks again to David Bailey for his time and his honesty, including the parts that weren’t flattering. That’s the conversation worth having.

So you want a good membrane. Inside a reliable pressure vessel. And nicely supported by a friendly steel frame.

(I know later come the pumps, the pipe interconnections, valves, energy recovery devices — it all counts...)

But today we talk about:

1. The strategy for how to deploy the heart into our project.

2. Who are the surgeons in the market?

Read more

The pipes are underground. The treatment plants are tucked away.

The operators work in silence, and the public only notices when something goes wrong.

We tend to take water for granted. Turn on the tap, water comes out.

Flush the toilet, it disappears.

Marco put it simply: the traditional approach is to hire a consultancy, give them your data, wait weeks, get a report, and then... try to follow up.

The problem is that a report is a snapshot. Reality is a moving picture. By the time the recommendations are implemented, the conditions may have already changed.

This is where real-time analytics changes everything. Not because it replaces human judgement — it doesn’t, I hope… — but because it arms the operator with the right information at the right moment.

It turns a reactive industry into a proactive one.

The leakage paradox: we know the problem, but not where it is

One of the clearest examples Marco gave was around non-revenue water.

Most utilities know they are losing water. The question is where.

We already reviewed the main common technologies that main utilities use in their daily operations, in some previous episode.

And that gap, between knowing a problem exists and knowing where to act, is exactly where digital tools can make a transformative difference.

InfoTiles connects SCADA readings with network GIS data to model risk across every pipe in a district metered area.

The resul is “these specific pipes, in this specific area, near the river, carry a substantially higher risk than their neighbours, start there.”

That is the difference between sending a team out with a general brief and sending them with a precise target.

And in an industry where budgets are highly stretched and operational time is precious, precision is key.

The same logic applies underground, in the sewer

What surprised me most was seeing the same framework applied to wastewater.

The challenge there is inflow and infiltration, unwanted water entering the sewer system through cracks, faulty joints, or groundwater intrusion (countries such as UK, Italy, Poland, Belgium, have real issues in this aspect).

You might know the problem exists at the treatment plant level, but when the network connected to that plant covers 1,000 or even 2,000 kilometres of pipe, “somewhere in the network” is not actionable.

What InfoTiles does is map every pumping station to the pipes it serves, run a risk model, and express the result in terms of cost and even CO2 footprint.

Suddenly you are looking at a real operational and financial decision.

In their demo, four stations out of 150 accounted for 50% of the total unnecessary cost.

That kind of prioritisation is what turns a problem into a plan.

The silver tsunami and what we are about to lose

Marco used a phrase I had heard before but that hit differently in this context: the silver tsunami.

The wave of experienced operators approaching retirement, taking with them decades of tacit knowledge about how their specific networks behave, knowledge that was never written down, never digitised, never transferred.

This is one of the most underappreciated crises in the water sector, but actually applies to all societies with certain demographic population status.

And it is not just a human resources problem. It is a decision quality problem.

When the person who knew intuitively that “that pump always acts up after heavy rain in October” retires, and that knowledge is not documented anywhere, the next operator starts from zero.

The goal of a well-designed digital platform is to capture that institutional knowledge — in the data, in the models, in the alerts — so that a newly qualified engineer and a 30-year veteran arrive at the same decision when facing the same problem.

The real barriers are not technical

I asked Marco directly: what is stopping this from scaling faster?

His answer was honest and revealing. In the early days, it was access to data, utilities were reluctant to share because of uncertainty about data quality, or simply because they had never been asked to trust an external platform with their operational information.

But the deeper barrier is cultural. The water sector is, by nature, risk-averse. And the consequences of getting it wrong can be serious. But that same conservatism can slow the adoption of tools that would dramatically reduce operational risk in the long run.

There is also the feedback loop problem. In digital advertising, you run a campaign and see results in hours.

In water infrastructure, you invest in pipe rehabilitation and measure the impact over months or years.

That long feedback loop makes it harder to build the internal business case even when the data is sitting right there, ready to be read.

Questions worth asking in your own organisation, for operators and utility managers:

1. Do we know not just how much water we are losing, but where, and in which part of our network is the risk highest right now?

2. When an experienced operator retires this year, what decision-making knowledge leaves with them and where is it documented?

3. Are our SCADA and GIS systems talking to each other, or are we still doing that join manually in a spreadsheet?

4. If we fixed the top five most critical zones in our network today, what would be the year-on-year cost saving, and do we even know what those zones are?

5. Is our reluctance to share operational data with a digital platform about genuine risk or is it inertia?

A note on AI, and keeping it honest

We also talked about the role of AI in all of this.

The temptation in any industry is to layer generative AI on top of everything and call it innovation.

But in water, where the data is complex, the formats are non-standard, and trust takes years to build, the smarter question is: where does AI genuinely add value and where does it just add noise?

I’m preparing a specific workshop and course with Sandro Hanseen about AI in water. If there is any topic you’d prefer us to focus on, let us know in this poll so we can prioritize what the audience needs most.

Imagine an operator asking, in plain language, “what should I do today?” and receiving a prioritised, evidence-based answer drawn from real-time sensor data, network models, and historical performance.

That future is closer than most utilities realise.

Wait, wait… the future has already caught up with us! Do you realize how fast everything is evolving, and how important it is to stay updated in our industry?

A Large Language Model (LLM) on top of PipeFusion, reading the outputs of our graph-based network (GNN) analysis and converting them into plain-language decisions.

Water and wastewater networks are complex. A single utility may manage tens of thousands of pipe segments, valves, sensors, and connections across ageing infrastructure with highly variable data quality. We have spent years building tools grounded in graph theory to model flow, detect anomalies, and quantify risk across every asset in a network.

The persistent challenge has been the last mile. Our models can identify that a specific asset carries elevated failure probability. What they could not easily do, until now, is tell an operator what to do about it, in the context of budget constraints, operational history, and comparable interventions.

By connecting the LLM to our risk and graph outputs, the system can reason across thousands of assets simultaneously. It surfaces the interventions most likely to reduce risk per unit of spend, explained in language a decision-maker can act on directly.

This work is part of a formal R&D programme supported by Norges forskningsråd (the Research Council of Norway). That backing matters. The work is structured, independently held to standard, and built to go well beyond proof-of-concept.

We are in early conversations with utilities who want to be part of this journey. Security, compliance, and data governance are not afterthoughts, they are part of the process from day one. Critical infrastructure demands that standard, and we hold ourselves to it.

This was a controlled test, not a production deployment. But the results were clear enough to give us genuine confidence that we are building something useful for the people responsible for delivering water to our homes and taking it away again.

What I took away

There is a phrase Marco used early in our conversation: water first, software second. It sounds simple, but it is actually a reframing of what digital transformation in this sector should mean.

The best digital tools in this space are the ones that get out of the way and let skilled operators do their jobs better.

They do not replace expertise, they amplify it. They do not add complexity, they reduce it.

And they do not promise miracles, they make the next right decision a little clearer, a little faster, every single day. Like The Water MBA :)

That, to me, is what transformative digitalisation actually looks like in the water sector. An evolution, quiet, rigorous, and deeply necessary!

This workshop pairs perfectly well with episode with Harry Polman last Sunday, so you can have the a full picture.

If the intake pipelines aren’t maintained, the plant cannot run at full capacity, as we already mentioned.

This leads to penalties, unhappy clients, and, most importantly, a lack of water for the people and industries that need it.

Pigging is a tool that prevents these failures, yet it is often overlooked during the design phase! It looks simple, but it is quite tricky in certain aspects.

So here I try to share the main lessons to consider in your projects when approaching pigging systems.

The reality of marine growth

Read more

Biofouling, maybe the most addressed word in desalination (after energy consumption).

I wanted to attack this topic from different angles, one of them is today with Harry Polman from H2O Biofouling Solutions.

Harry has spent over 30 years studying how marine life interacts with industrial infrastructure.

We talk a lot about membranes, but we rarely focus on the very beginning of the process.

Harry’s perspective is refreshing because he looks at the biology of the ocean to solve engineering problems.

We are working with nature, not just against it.

The hidden biology of our pipes

Seawater intakes are perfect habitats for marine life. Organisms like mussels, oysters, and barnacles enter our systems as tiny larvae. Once they find a surface with a good flow of water, they attach and grow rapidly.

I am aware of a real-world case where seawater did not reach the intake pump station at the expected flow rate.

Why?

Because inside the intake pipe, instead of having the intended internal diameter (let’s say 1600 mm), the effective diameter was much smaller due to marine growth.

As a result, head losses became so significant that the water did not arrive as expected.

Consequently, the desalination plant could not produce the expected amount of water.

In just a few weeks, these larvae become hard-shelled organisms.

This increases the “wall roughness” of the pipe, creating resistance and head loss.

Cases where the effective diameter of a pipe was reduced by 30%.

When you can’t get enough water into the plant, you simply cannot meet your production targets. It is a physical bottleneck that starts long before the water reaches a single membrane.

As illustrated in the sketch below by one of the world’s leading experts in intakes & outfalls (remember our course ;)), Eloy Pita from Increa, the scenario suggests that the piezometric level (shown in green, representing the worst-case condition) is actually lower than expected. As a result, water would either not flow (or would flow at a reduced capacity) from the intake riser to the lifting pump station.

The unintended consequences of chlorination

A loyal member of our community, Ms. Guadalupe, who operates a desalination plant in Spain, once told me they had serious biofouling issues in their membranes.

Interestingly, the problem disappeared when they stopped applying shock chlorination at the intake, which had originally been used to control marine fouling inside the intake pipe.

Instead, they chose to invest in divers and frequent mechanical maintenance, as they found it to be the most cost-effective life cycle solution.

However, Harry shared a perspective that many operators struggle with: the balance between the intake and the membranes.

If you have an intake already full of marine life and you start a heavy chlorination program, you end up killing that organic material and releasing it into the water.

This dead organic matter often causes more fouling downstream on the RO membranes.

It shouldn’t be a choice between a clean pipe or a clean membrane.

The goal is to understand the local biology well enough to maintain a clean system from the very start without overloading the downstream process.

The previous case made me curious, as I was not entirely sure about the relationship between chlorination and membrane biofouling.

So, I asked our friend Arian Edalat, and he told me:

He also recommended a book by what is probably one of the world’s leading experts on the subject, Nikolay Voutchkov (and, by the way, I was honored to receive a LinkedIn connection invitation from him a few days ago!).

Moving beyond “copy and paste” engineering

One of the biggest hurdles we discussed is how we design these plants.

I remember asking a process engineer in a previous project:

“How do you size chlorination dosing in different projects?”

He replied:

“It is mostly standard practice, based on common industry norms. In many cases, it is directly requested by the end users in the RFP.”

So, we simply request the equipment from approved vendors, sometimes for projects where the investment reaches the scale of millions. I remember thinking: what a great business for those companies…

Typically, a developer or utility follows a standard template: they buy a large electro-chlorination unit and hope for the best.

Harry advocates for studying local conditions during the feasibility or environmental study phase.

By understanding the specific species and their breeding cycles, we can design dosing systems that are much smaller and more efficient.

This saves on CAPEX and prevents the scaling issues often caused by over-dosing.

We need to stop seeing biofouling prevention as an “add-on” and start seeing it as a core part of the design.

Anyway, as the current reality is that many of us are—and will continue to be—facing the design, procurement, installation, and testing of these systems, I leave you here with a webinar where you can take a look at what these systems actually look like:

The human barrier to innovation

When I asked Harry about the biggest barriers to better solutions, he didn’t point to technology. He pointed to human behavior (what else…).

Many people in our sector are resistant to change because “this is how we have always done it.” There is also a fear of admitting that a current system isn’t working.

Working as a consultant in this space requires a lot of “emotional intelligence.”

You have to show operators and owners that there is a better way without making them feel at fault for the current situation.

It is about creating a win-win scenario where the plant runs more reliably and the operator has fewer headaches.

Whether it is a project in Saudi Arabia or Spain, the technical challenge is often easier to solve than the cultural one.

European Desalination Society

Harry and I will be in Marrakech on June 2026 in Euromed, he has a couple of sessions, so I look forward to meeting him, as well as any other reading this and may be there, write me in!

Desalination Plant in Barcelona

Last year at the AEDyR (Spanish Desalination and Reuse Association Congress), there was a very interesting technical session on this topic.

One case presented described a plant that experienced a massive proliferation of organisms—specifically mussels—within its intake system.

The accumulation of biological material caused occasional pumping shutdowns due to the reduction of the water passage section, reaching critical safety levels for the pumps.

These are gregarious organisms (they accumulate on top of one another), resistant to chlorination, and their growth is favored by a constant flow rich in nutrients and oxygen.

Various strategies were described to combat fouling in the intake pipelines:

• The use of divers.

• pigging systems (internal mechanical cleaning, next Tuesday specific episode about this).

• the use of ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) equipped with tools for inspection and pipe scrubbing.

Other preventive measures such as:

• Dosing of sodium hypochlorite (chlorine) and air. Shock chlorination treatments of up to 15 ppm for 24 hours.

• Application of anti-fouling coatings (rich in copper and nickel) on the intake windows and the first meters of the intake tower, where there is more light and a higher tendency for organisms to attach.

• Microbubble screens around the intake to prevent contaminants and organisms from reaching the system, a technique imported from the salmon farming industry.

• Ultraviolet light treatments at the intake system.

Al-Khafji Solar Desalination Plant

I talked to Harry about this plant that they have as project references to assess biofouling.

Back in 2014, the project came with requirements far beyond what we were used to—long intake and outfall pipelines, complex hydraulics, and demanding performance expectations, redundancy criterias, oversizing aspects, etc.

When we put the numbers together, the estimate reached around 120 million dollars for a 60 MLD plant.

My proposal manager looked at me and said, “120 m$ for 60 MLD? That rate is out of market! I prefer not submitting a bid, it will jeopardise our reputation!”

It felt like we were completely out of the game. And yet, we went ahead and submitted.

When the results came back, we were L1, by a significant margin.

Mmarkets don’t always behave as expected, and that sometimes what looks “too expensive” is simply a more realistic reflection of the challenge in front of you.

Thank you!

These past few weeks, the momentum has been real.

We’re seeing more and more interesting people joining the community, many of you actively sharing valuable insights, technical knowledge, and business perspectives.

I especially enjoy how the networking chat is evolving, real conversations, collaboration opportunities emerging, and even roles and career moves starting to flow organically.

This is exactly the kind of ecosystem we hoped to build: a place where water professionals from around the world can connect, learn, and create value together.

I’m genuinely excited about what we’re building, and even more about where it can go if we keep this energy and generosity.

Next Sunday, we shift gears into a key topic: DIGITALISATION.
Get ready!

Thank you to Harry, as well as to Patricia González and Catalina Iglesias, for helping me get this learning piece done.

*Note: Due to a cloud recording issue, from minute 18:00 onward you’ll notice no captions and lower audio quality, as I had to rely on a backup cloud file instead of the high-quality recording. Apologies for the inconvenience!

It appears on the courses in risk management, ethics, and infrastructure governance.

Following our hydropower episode released last Sunday, it’s a story I find fascinating, I’ve also watched the film (only found the spanish version as uploaded above).

I’ve written about the story, which caused probably the biggest tsunami on earth (it seems it reached 250 m height wave…) and its lessons, and surprisingly (or not), many of the takeaways still hold true today.

This is what many stakeholders, decision-makers, and entities face in water today. Accountability is often diffused across many areas, as this story clearly shows.

There’s a Spanish saying, “Entre todos la mataron y ella sola se murió,” which is roughly equivalent to the English idea of “Everybody’s responsibility becomes nobody’s responsibility.”

I hope this piece of writing helps you see above the fog, gain a clearer view of how things sometimes work, and reflect on what we can do to improve.

What happened

Read more

We had UPS systems, so a few minutes passed without major disruption.

Then I started hearing that there was no electricity in other cities from messages I was receiving.

The first person that came to mind was José Manuel. I opened LinkedIn and sent him a message, and he replied shortly after.

It was in Spanish, but interestingly, within just a few minutes, José Manuel already had a very clear idea of the origin of the blackout, while the media and political discussion took weeks of “we need to investigate” and “we are looking into it”.

As José Manuel also pointed out, we are pro-renewable, pro-hydropower, pro-batteries, and pro-nuclear, but always with the understanding that each has its own role, mix, and constraints.

A national blackout is something you have to experience to fully understand.

because in many areas it depends on electric pumps. In fact, many parts of the city were without water, and people were queuing in supermarkets to buy bottled water, without even asking the price…

Our workshop

So, in the workshop we held with José Manuel and SENER, as one of the most reputable teams worldwide in hydropower and pumped storage (no doubt about this fact), we focused the discussion first on how the energy market actually works, what happens with high shares of renewables, and then on building a clear visual understanding of what that “giant battery” really is in a reverse pumped hydro system.

The energy transition is often framed through installed capacity targets and technological progress.

However, the real transformation is happening at a deeper level:

the way electricity systems must operate under increasing shares of variable renewable energy, particularly solar and wind.

What emerges is a system where the central challenge is no longer generation, but integration.

And within that challenge, hydropower, especially in its reversible pumped-storage form, is our player :)

The duck curve

One of the most illustrative concepts in modern power systems is the “duck curve,” which describes the mismatch between solar generation and demand over a typical day.

At midday, solar PV floods the system with energy, often exceeding demand. This creates a deep valley of net demand.

Then, as the sun sets, solar generation collapses while consumption rises sharply, requiring fast and flexible ramping from other sources.

But as discussed in the sector, this curve is becoming more extreme. It is no longer just a “duck,” but something closer to a cliff.

The midday oversupply is increasingly accompanied by price collapses, while the evening ramp becomes steeper and more operationally stressful.

“Receiving the PV”

A key operational insight from system operators is that the challenge is not simply producing solar energy, but receiving it.

When photovoltaic production peaks, the system must have somewhere to send that energy.

If demand is insufficient and storage is unavailable, the system is forced into curtailment or near-zero pricing conditions.

In other words, solar generation is not limited by sunlight, but by the system’s ability to absorb it.

This is why flexible assets, pumped hydro, batteries, and responsive demand, are becoming essential. They are the infrastructure that allows PV to actually be integrated.

The economics of zero-price hours

A consequence of high solar penetration is the increasing frequency of hours with extremely low or even zero electricity prices.

In some scenarios, investors in renewable assets discover that a significant portion of future revenue is concentrated in fewer and fewer hours.

In extreme cases, a plant designed under traditional assumptions of 2,000 operating hours per year may find that a meaningful share of those hours are now worth zero euros per megawatt-hour.

This leads to a paradox: investment in renewable capacity continues, but the marginal value of energy during peak production periods declines sharply.

In practice, the system compresses value into narrower time windows, and profitability becomes increasingly dependent on flexibility and timing rather than volume.

This is why planning horizons matter so much.

Hydropower and pumped storage

In this context, hydropower and pumped storage may act as the system’s natural stabiliser.

Pumped storage systems absorb excess energy when prices are low, often during midday solar peaks, and release it when the system is tight, typically in the evening.

This makes them the ideal complement to solar generation, which follows the opposite pattern.

Unlike batteries, which are typically limited to shorter durations, pumped hydro provides large-scale, long-duration storage.

It is, in many ways, the only technology currently capable of shifting energy across daily and multi-hour cycles at system scale.

Spring is coming, when water becomes the competitor

Jose Manuel wrote a few weeks ago “spring is coming” as the renewable game of thrones.

During wet periods reservoir levels rise and natural inflows are abundant.

Over the past two springs, photovoltaic generation has been capturing significantly less value, and 2026 does not look set to improve.

Spring combines lower electricity demand with rapidly increasing solar production. Year after year, more PV capacity enters the system precisely when consumption is weakest, leading to midday oversupply.

The result is clear in the market: frequent zero or negative prices, increasing pressure on PPAs…

Average captured prices have dropped from €72/MWh in spring 2023 to just €17/MWh in spring 2025.

And high hydropower output in recent springs has added further supply, concentrating competition among renewables in the same hours.

In 2026, the system enters with an additional 8 GW of solar capacity installed in 2025.

The consequence is increasingly persistent: solar-hour prices tending towards zero for long periods during spring.

Around the world

China is not hesitating in investing heavily in this water infrastructure.

The Fengning Pumped Storage Power Station in Hebei Province, China, is the world’s largest pumped-storage hydroelectric plant, with a total installed capacity of 3,600 MW.

As of December 31, 2024, the facility became fully operational following the commissioning of its 12th and final turbine unit.

In US, Jose Manuel published a few days ago about this interesting project.

LG&E and KU Energy LLC, subsidiaries of PPL Corporation, have partnered with Rye Development to evaluate a 266MW pumped storage hydropower project in eastern Kentucky.

If completed, it would be the first pumped storage facility in Kentucky and among the first new projects of its type built in the US in more than three decades.

“Pumped storage hydro has been used for decades around the world, and we’re proud to be part of an effort that could introduce it here in Eastern Kentucky.”

The proposed facility would operate as an eight-hour storage system, generating up to 266MW of electricity by cycling water between two reservoirs at different elevations. The project is intended to provide dispatchable capacity during periods of peak demand.

“Large-scale energy storage systems like Lewis Ridge not only strengthen the grid; they are significant long-term investments, providing economic benefits to communities and stabilizing energy prices for decades,”

Rye Development estimates the project cost at $1.3bn, including $81m in funding from the US Department of Energy. Construction is expected to support approximately 2,300 jobs over four years and generate around $1.65m annually in local tax revenue once operational.

The project received a preliminary permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2022 and is currently progressing through the federal licensing process.

Construction could begin in 2027, with commercial operation targeted for 2031.

The utilities currently operate more than 7200MW of generation capacity across coal, natural gas, solar and hydro assets, including the Ohio Falls and Dix Dam hydro plants in Kentucky.

So…

I personally really value this type of infrastructure.

Water and hydropower are among the oldest renewable energy sources humans have developed, and they remain a fundamental part of any country’s energy portfolio.

In some countries such as Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Norway the water–energy nexus is especially evident.

In these cases, energy security is tightly linked to hydrological conditions: when rainfall is scarce, hydropower output drops, which can directly lead to energy shortages and even blackouts.

At the same time, in regions with strong solar and diversified renewable mixes, pumped-storage hydropower can act as the “giant battery” the system needs, storing excess electricity and releasing it when demand peaks or when solar and wind are not available.

Soon, I’ll also share a specific insight on the relationship between nuclear energy and water, another highly relevant and increasingly discussed topic.

Thanks for being there!

I’m not usually one to celebrate numbers for their own sake, but in this case, it truly represents something valuable.

I’m reminded of our conversation when he was about a year into the journey, shared above.

It’s interesting to see how things evolve, back then, the preference was clearly for audio, and now it’s shifting toward video and face-to-face interviews. That’s real progress!

I wish him all the best moving forward and hope he continues to receive the support from all of us, because that’s the real fuel behind initiatives like this.

​A career built on curiosity

​Daniel’s entry into the water world was almost accidental.

After finishing his chemistry degree in the early 2000s, he sent out paper resumes by mail, searching for any opportunity in the chemical sector.

He ended up at Aqualia, a company he originally associated with waste management rather than chemistry.

This taught me that sometimes the best career paths are the ones we don't plan, provided we are willing to dive in and learn once we arrive.

​The necessity of lifelong learning

​Daniel is committted to education. Even with a solid background, he returned to study engineering while raising a family.

He didn't stop there; he pursued specialized courses in wastewater treatment and even an MBA.

In our sector, technical expertise is the foundation, but it is not the ceiling.

To grow into management or leadership, we have to find time, often from our own personal hours, to gain new perspectives.

​Transitioning from technical to managerial roles

​Daniel pursued an MBA (but not the good one…the real The Water MBA 😜) because he wanted to move from being a "calculator" or technical manager to a more strategic role.

This transition is common but difficult.

He found that while technical skills are precise, roles in leadership require an understanding of marketing, human resources, and accounting.

The MBA provided a broad, high level view of these areas, which allowed him to see the "water business" as a whole, rather than just a series of technical processes.

​Creating space for new initiatives

​The birth of El Podcast del Agua is a perfect example of Daniel's drive.

Despite a demanding job and family life, he found a gap in the market for high quality audio content in Spanish about water.

He even took a course on podcasting to ensure a professional standard.

It reminds me that we all have "extra" time if we look for it, and using that time to share knowledge can benefit the entire community.

So, cheers to the next 100 episodes, and to enjoying every step of the journey ahead.

In 2026, the sector is being driven by a "perfect storm" of aging infrastructure, tightening environmental regulations, and the explosive growth of water-hungry technologies like AI and semiconductors.

Many many trends, hard to pin down and clearly articulate, but here are a few notes I’ve captured in my workspace.

1. In 2026, the premium is on certainty, investors want assets that are already connected to the grid and have secured water rights.

2. Software and sensor startups being acquired by traditional equipment manufacturers to modernize their product lines.

3. "Water-as-a-Service" models are trending. Companies like Veolia and Ecolab are acquiring firms that offer modular, onsite recycling systems that allow factories to reuse 90%+ of their water.

4. Strict new mandates for removing PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) have triggered a massive investment cycle.

5. Solving modern water problems, like removing "forever chemicals" (PFAS), requires specialized technology

I’m chasing a colleague on the front line of M&A in water. He’s damn busy, but I hope I can get him into our community ASAP, as this is fundamental knowledge for any water MBA.

So in the meantime I get the real expert, I picked probably the biggest case so we can open the conversation in this field.

The acquisition of Veolia over Suez is one of the most defining corporate battles in the history of the water industry.

Read more

But the reality is that in every network in the world, without exception!, a percentage of water never reaches its destination. It is lost along the way, literally.

The concept even has a technical name: Non-Revenue Water (NRW).

It covers not just physical leaks, but also measurement errors, fraud, and unmetered supply.

This concept was highlighted by Viktoria Edwards from Fido Tech a few weeks ago in Wex Global as she “did not like at all the terminology used”, probably referring the term “revenue” suggesting that we should perhaps use different language to reflect that this part of the business is much more than revenue.

Our guest David has been a great supporter since December 2023, with a few calls as I wanted to understand what the reality is in daily operations. Having someone who has spent years in the field, getting their boots dirty and testing each of these technologies day by day, builds exactly the kind of practical knowledge we aim to share here in The Water MBA.

The figure varies enormously from country to country, city to city, and is directly linked (as David made clear) to investment in infrastructure renewal.

David presented a table that, frankly, is awesome. A leak of just two millimetres in diameter, at a typical pressure of 6 bar, amounts to nearly 2,500 cubic metres of water per year. That is: one Olympic swimming pool.

A tiny, invisible pinhole. An Olympic swimming pool lost every year.

Multiply that across the thousands of kilometres of network in any mid-sized city and the scale of the problem starts to sink in.

And it is not just a matter of water resources (though in areas of severe water stress that alone would be reason enough), it is also a matter of public safety.

Leaked water follows the path of least resistance, erodes the surrounding soil and can eventually create sinkholes.

And sinkholes swallow whatever is above them: cars, roads, even people.

The technologies, a richer ecosystem than I expected

Before this workshop back in 2024, my mental image of “leak detection” was fairly basic: someone with a device listening to the ground.

And while that exists and works, the ecosystem of available technologies is far broader and more sophisticated.

The first level: non-invasive

Starts with something as fundamental as network sectorisation. Dividing the network into DMAs (District Metered Areas), well-contained zones where everything that enters and exits is measured, makes it possible to monitor the minimum night flow: that window between 3 and 4 in the morning when consumption should be nearly zero.

If that minimum flow rises from one month to the next without explanation, it is a warning sign.

No sophisticated technology required, just well-collected, well-interpreted data.

From there come acoustic pre-locators, devices placed on valves and hydrants that listen for the vibration frequencies generated by leaks and allow operators to narrow down problem areas.

They are affordable, manageable by non-specialist staff, and have become the workhorse of day-to-day operations for most utilities. A two-person crew can cover around 10 kilometres of metal pipework in a single working day.

Then, to pinpoint the exact location within a flagged stretch, geophones and correlators come into play. They measure the difference in the time it takes a sound wave to travel from the leak to each of two sensors, and triangulate the position. Surgical precision before the excavator moves in and break any other existing utility :)

Satellite detection is particularly intriguing: radar imagery that picks up moisture in the soil and is overlaid on network maps. The concept is spectacular, inspecting kilometre after kilometre without sending anyone into the field.

The reality for satellite, based on David’s direct experience, is that it currently generates too many false positives in urban environments. Where it may have more of a future, we reflected together, is in arid regions: transmission pipelines in Middle Eastern deserts, remote areas where physical access carries an enormous cost.

The second level: in contact with the water

Where investment rises, but so does precision.

Acoustic spheres (equipped with hydrophones, gyroscopes and electromagnetic sensors) are inserted into the pipeline and travel with the water flow, listening from the inside.

They can cover 10 kilometres of inspection in a single run, with sensitivity that far exceeds any external system.

The most memorable pitfall David mentioned: if any branch connections are not closed in time, the sphere can escape through them. It has happened. More than once.

Beyond the cost of the material itself, the real cost lies in the human work behind it, the information gathered and stored, and the hours invested in the process.

In this technology, one of the most intriguing brands I have come across lately is Aganova, because it goes beyond the mere use of the sphere. They take a very interesting approach through a Water Positive framework. They also have a Water Positive Manager (who would have said, 4 or 5 years ago, that this role would exist…!) named José Carlos Gil. It may be worth reaching out to him to learn more about it.

For cases where precision is absolutely critical, a pipe beneath a motorway, a metro crossing, a protected historic area, there is the option of the cable-fed CCTV camera: a system that advances metre by metre, recording the inside of the pipe in real time, capable of detecting not only leaks but cracks, corrosion and structural deterioration.

It is slow (one kilometre per day), expensive, and requires a specialist crew. But when the margin for error in excavation has to be zero, nothing comes close.

And finally, permanent hydrophone systems: sensors installed at fixed points on critical sections of the network, continuously connected to the internet, that send real-time alerts the moment an anomaly is detected.

For the most sensitive infrastructure, the kind that cannot wait for a quarterly inspection campaign, this is, in David’s words, absolutely essential.

When operating well beats building new

A few years ago, the city Monterrey in MExico needed more water.

The solution on the table was ambitious: 372 kilometres of two-and-a-half-metre diameter pipeline, a colossal infrastructure project.

I travelled to Mexico to tender this project. The risk of estimating costs on this kind of project was huge.

The pipe crossed many properties, with some “dangerous” areas due to narcotraffic control. The geotechnical and topographic conditions were highly variable.

Estimating construction time and required resources is, simply, a huge risk the longer the pipeline is.

The project was finally cancelled.

Instead, investment went into something less glamorous but equally powerful: pressure management.

Regulating valves that learn the consumption patterns of each sector and adjust their output pressure in real time, always guaranteeing the minimum required pressure at the most critical point, without over-pressurising the rest of the network.

Here the approach case of Idrica in this city.

The result: fewer leaks, less water lost, demand met, without building a single additional metre of new infrastructure.

This connects to something I witnessed over years of working on transmission and distribution projects in countries like Bangladesh and Senegal: material selection is never just a calculation of upfront cost.

In markets where operation and maintenance capacity is limited, ductile iron ( expensive, heavy, robust…) wins because it guarantees decades of service with minimal intervention.

The true price of any infrastructure always includes what it costs to keep it alive.

The “future”: Artificial Intelligence

It is funny we talked about AI already back in 2024, and it was already clear the greatest potential for improvement in this field does not come from inventing new types of sensors, but from better interpreting the data that existing sensors already produce.

A sphere travelling through a pipeline generates a vast amount of acoustic, electromagnetic and pressure information.

Today, much of that information is still interpreted manually, a technician with headphones, listening to recordings, marking where they think they heard something anomalous.

Machine learning changes that. If you train a model on enough cases… this sound, in a 200mm polyethylene pipe, at this pressure, turned out to be a leak of this size…the system learns to recognise patterns that the human ear cannot process at scale.

Reliability improves. False positives decrease. And eventually, the system may be able to quantify not just the location but the volume of the leak.

We are at the very beginning of that transformation. But the direction is clear.

Big event coming up

As conversations around water losses, leakages, and non-revenue water (NRW) continue to gain urgency, a major event in Brazil is bringing together professionals tackling these challenges head-on.

One member of our community will be attending, sharing insights and connecting with others working to reduce system inefficiencies.

If you happen to be there as well, feel free to send me a message, great opportunity to meet and exchange perspectives.

What i take away

Urban water management is, at its core, an exercise in technical humility and intelligent prioritisation.

There is no perfect technology that meets every requirement at once, affordable, precise, fast, non-invasive, applicable to any material and any diameter.

Every tool has its domain. The skill lies in knowing when to use which one.

It deserves more attention than it gets. And the professionals who know it, listen to it and care for it, people like David, deserve to be heard.

Do you have experience working with distribution networks or leak detection? I’d love to continue the conversation in the comments or in our networking chat.

It is expected to become one of the largest growth areas in the water sector.

This helped me understand why, in recent events, so many colleagues were particularly “engaged” and “excited” when representatives from companies like L’Oréal and other multinationals were present. Similarly to my daughters watching the K-Pop Netflix film.

At the same time, I was contacted on LinkedIn by a representative from an automotive company. They asked me for a quote to deliver a one-hour “lunch & learn” session (i had no idea what that meant until I googled it) for their employees, covering topics such as:

• Why water has become such a critical global issue and why its importance continues to grow

• An overview of key water-related risks facing industrial plants

• The current state of water as a resource, both globally and regionally

• A forward-looking perspective on emerging trends

• A discussion around their Water Position Paper, including the KPIs they are tracking going forward

The budget they had available was around €400–€700. I estimated that preparing the session properly would require 16–20 hours of work. I said ok let’s send a proposal.

Beyond the economics, it was a valuable opportunity to better understand corporate water from the inside.

In the end, they decided to focus on another environmental topic instead of water.

However, I still chose to do the work internally, to get useful insight into how companies structure their water position papers, especially around KPIs, what they measure, how they define them, and what those metrics actually imply in practice.

I believe this is highly relevant for members of our community interested in water stewardship, corporate water risk, and industrial water strategy.

These corporate frameworks will increasingly shape investment decisions, and ultimately drive demand for water professionals, consultants, and technology providers to help deliver on those targets.

So here my findings.

Read more

This region is considered to be the "cradle of civilization", but we rarely discuss the reality of those water systems.

Tabark represents the energy of the next generation of engineers who are looking back at their heritage with a technical and critical eye.

It matters because Iraq’s water case study show transboundary water issues, the geopolitics of water, internal contrasts in water management within a single country, the role of large-scale grey infrastructure to ensure water availability, and strategies for flood mitigation…

As I’ll develop further later on this essay, Iraq is pushing ahead with a massive seawater desalination initiative near Basra, the largest desalination project of its kind in the world. The facility is expected to produce about 1,000,000 m³ of fresh water per day to help address chronic water shortages caused by prolonged drought and declining flows in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which have been severely affected by climate and upstream damming.

At the same time, parts of northern Iraq have recently experienced heavy seasonal rainfall and flooding after years of drought.

Why the rivers look different today

When Tabark returned to Iraq after more than a decade, she was struck by a sight she didn’t expect: the rivers were nearly empty.

For someone who understands the hydraulics of a river system, seeing the Tigris and Euphrates at such low levels was surprising.

We cannot treat rivers as isolated local resources.

The geography here is unforgiving. Iraq covers nearly half of the river basin but contributes almost no surface water to the flow.

Meanwhile, Turkey contributes about 90% of the water while covering much less of the basin.

This physical reality creates a natural dependency that defines every political and economic decision in the region.

The shift from natural to regulated systems

One of the most important takeaways from our talk was the “pivotal point” in the 1960s and 70s.

Before then, the rivers followed natural cycles of flooding and drought.

Since then, massive infrastructure projects—like the Southeastern Anatolia Project** project in Turkey, also known as “GAP”—have turned a natural system into a regulated one.

**It centers on the harnessing of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers to transform Turkey's southeastern provinces through energy production and massive irrigation. The plan envisages 22 dams and 19 hydroelectric power plants (HEPP). The project targets the irrigation of 1.7 to 1.8 million hectares of land, which represents about 20% of Turkey's total irrigable area.

This is another clear case study of geopolitics and transboundary water, complementing our famous cases of Nile River, Indus River, etc.

With storage capacity now four or five times the annual flow of the Euphrates, the power has shifted upstream, having the decision-making power to open or close the gates.

For Iraq, this means that the “life or death” resource they rely on for irrigation and drinking water is no longer fully in their hands.

Quality is as important as quantity

We often focus on whether there is enough water, but Tabark reminded me that flow volume and water quality are inseparable.

As the water moves from the mountains of Turkey down to the flat plains of southern Iraq, the salinity increases naturally due to the soil and geology.

When the flow is reduced by upstream dams, the concentration of salt and pollution becomes much higher.

By the time the water reaches cities like Basra, it is often too salty or contaminated to use without advanced treatment.

Having a river nearby does not guarantee having clean water, as you can see in the below picture taken in Basra.

The water supply remains contaminated with untreated sewage, industrial waste, and medical runoff (including antibiotics and toxins from hospitals). Basra is the "sink" for Iraq's waterways.

The invisible impact of water engineering

Tabark and I talked about the role of the water engineer and why it often feels undervalued.

Unlike a bridge or a skyscraper, our best work is often invisible. If we do our job perfectly, nothing happens. There are no floods, the taps stay on, and the water is safe.

She made a great point about “outreach.” If we want to attract more young people to this sector, we have to get better at showing the impact.

We need to move beyond the idea that engineering is just about building things. It is about managing risks and protecting communities.

Too much water!

Iraq is facing a severe crisis due to torrential rains and flash floods that began in mid-March. While the country has struggled with drought for years as commented, this sudden deluge has overwhelmed infrastructure and displaced thousands.

At least 4 deaths and over a dozen injuries reported due to lightning strikes and collapsing structures.

Approximately 7,500 people have been forced to leave their homes.

Over 31,000 individuals across multiple provinces have suffered significant property loss or lack of access to clean water and electricity.

I’m increasingly valuing the role of engineers like Tabark Majid, working at the intersection of hydrology, flooding, and urban planning.

Given the growing importance of this field, I’ll make a conscious effort to give it more visibility and recognition in what I share.

I’m also glad to see that our networking chat is becoming one of the strongest gatherings so far, specially in hydrology/flooding theme. It’s a great signal of the interest and momentum building around these topics.

I expect to bring more practical elements into it, potentially including live demos or workshops focused on digital tools that can be applied in real-world water management and planning.

And now the biggest RO desalination plant

At a certain point, it becomes difficult for any country to resist taking decisive action to secure water for its population. That breaking point has clearly been reached here.

When you consider all the factors, water controlled upstream, significantly reduced river flows, rising contamination levels, and the degraded quality by the time it reaches Basra and the Gulf, the situation becomes unsustainable.

And this is not a marginal issue. The south is home to millions of people, alongside critical industrial activity and agriculture.

So in early 2026, the Iraqi government awarded a $2.4 billion contract to a Chinese-Iraqi consortium led by PowerChina to build a massive seawater desalination plant of 1,000,000 m3/day in Basra. It is expected to take nearly four years to complete.

China has spent years investing in and developing infrastructure, especially across Africa, and this is yet another example of how it is shaping the global water landscape.

In desalination, scale changes everything. Delivering a single large-scale plant in just one year can immediately position you among the top players worldwide, as you can see below.

If you’re interested in desalination, two things I’d like to share 2 points.

I’ll be in Marrakech this June for the Euromed Desalination Conference, where I’ll be giving a short session on learning at scale in mega-desalination plants. Let me know if you’ll be there.

Given this growing importance, I’m organizing a basic-level Desalination Course for those starting out or looking to enter the field. The pace of this infrastructure development is outstripping the availability of experienced professionals. Seriously.

From what I see firsthand, anyone entering now. regardless of their background, can benefit significantly from a practical, structured learning approach.

If you’re interested, send me a message. I’ll aim to gather a small cohort and build something valuable.

One last thing

This week I managed to convince my wife to watch a conversation on YouTube instead of a Netflix series. She agreed, but on one condition: A foot massage in the meantime. I said fair enough.

Ben is reading this, he’s been a great supporter of The Water MBA for quite some time. In fact, we managed to bring together a really interesting episode on innovation in membrane spacers with Aqua Membranes. I’m a huge fan of the way he approaches marketing. Some of the videos I’ve come across are genuinely funny, I really enjoy them.

So I was watching them, talking about water companies and social media, and around minute 14:00, Ben actually mentioned The Water MBA and said what we’re doing is great.

I turned to my wife and said, “Hey, did you hear that?”

She just smiled and said, “Well… he’s your friend.”

Thanks a lot to Ben for the kind words, I really appreciate it.

You can watch the exact moment here:

I’ve been talking about this for the past three years: the world has changed, and so has the ecosystem.

The way people consume content is completely different now, what we consume directly shapes how we understand the world.

That’s why consuming high-quality content matters more than ever, and why we need to actively use the platforms where people are already spending their time.

Last year, I bought a new smart TV. On the remote, there was a dedicated button for YouTube. It made me curious. I started asking friends, and many of them said the same thing: “I don’t really watch TV anymore, I just follow YouTube channels.”

I’m both a producer and a consumer. I realized I was doing the same. I go to YouTube to watch what interests me.

That’s one of the reasons I decided to open months ago a small window there as well, to make it easier for those who primarily use YouTube to access this kind of content.

And I strongly recommend adding Björn’s channel to your list. It’s high-quality, highly relevant for water professionals, and there’s a lot we can learn from it in terms of communication and marketing.

Thanks everyone for your support!

That’s why in the last weeks, I’ve been at my corporate job trying to identify which usual tasks and time spending of my daily job could be improved using AI in some way. Every minute I save on a task, by doing it faster or automating it, is a minute of pure value.

During Easter, I met with a few friends. I wanted to contrast what I found with them, they work in different industries, such as a partner at EY, a purchasing manager in energy sector, a logistics manager, and a project manager working in the drone industry (this one is the most advanced one…).

You know there is nothing better than a good lunch or conversation with interesting people, and even better if they are outside your usual business, to see beyond.

We need to learn to unlearn old work habits and adopt new operational methods.

We need to rewire our brains.

Your “team” is no longer scarce or expensive, you can iterate endlessly, test multiple approaches, and improve in minutes.

So I will share what I found about how we use AI today in our jobs, and what we can expect to do.

Read more

Manuel has been one of our fellow supporters from the very beginning, we’ve been in touch periodically since beginning of 2024 exchanging feedback and ideas. He also introduced me to great people in the industry, one of them you’ll get to know during the month of May, it is one of the best conversations we have shaped so far in my opinion, so stay tuned.

AlUla is an ancient oasis city in northwestern Saudi Arabia, home to Nabataean tomb cities like Hegra, thousands of years of layered civilizations, and one of the most spectacular archaeological landscapes in the Arab world.

The Nabataeans were ancient Arab people who inhabited northern Arabia and the Southern Levant, famously known for building the rock-cut city of Petra and controlling vast incense trade routes.

I first came to know about this region when I started to work in projects in the new developments on Red Sea, actually they signed an agreement to foster tourism in this area not long time ago.

Red Sea Global partners with Alula to drive collaboration in Saudi Arabian tourism sector

In our industry, we often treat environmental regulations as a hurdle to overcome. But Manuel sees proves differently.

I recognize that when you face such environmental requirements (I’ve experienced this firsthand in developments in the Red Sea), it can feel overwhelming—mainly because they demand time, and during project tenders, time often feels like a luxury amid all the “urgent” priorities.

Compliance is the bridge between a massive engineering project and the long-term survival of the ecosystem it sits in.

It is about moving from “doing no harm” to actively creating a water-positive footprint.

As Saudi Arabia develops its giga-projects under Vision 2030, the scale of construction is unprecedented. In this environment, the stakes for the water sector are incredibly high.

The dream of the 800,000 cubic meters

Manuel tells a story that perfectly captures why people stay in this industry for decades.

Back in 2007, while working in Madrid, he read a press release about a project in Jubail, Saudi Arabia.

It was a massive undertaking: 800,000 cubic meters of desalinated water combined with 2.5 gigawatts of power.

He said that this news “blew his mind.”

He didn’t just want to read about it; he wanted to witness it.

It took five years of planning and international work, but by 2012, he was standing in front of that very plant.

The water business is built on these moments of awe, where the scale of human ingenuity meets a fundamental human need.

A weekend trip that changed a career

The second story Manuel shared felt almost like fate.

In 2021, while working in Yambu, he decided to visit Alula as a tourist.

He was struck by the landscape, a unique mix of historical heritage and archaeological wonders.

As he was driving around the ancient valley, he passed the building of the Royal Commission for Alula.

A little over a year later, he was hired.

This story highlights the personal connection we often have with the land we work on. To protect a resource like water, you first have to appreciate the environment it sustains.

Manuel went from a visitor admiring the scenery to the man responsible for ensuring its environmental integrity.

Those two stories probably give you a clear indication of the mindset many of us need as water professionals:

What compliance actually means

When we talk about environmental compliance, we are talking about accountability. Manuel explained that it is a combination of three pillars:

• Governance and Regulation: The rules that set the standard for quality and safety.

• Transparency: The ability to report data honestly so we can monitor consumption and quality.

• Cross-agency Collaboration: Breaking down silos so that health, environment, and industry departments work as one unit.

Compliance is the mechanism that ensures the water we produce is fit for consumption, that we aren’t wasting a drop, and that we are using smart technology to optimize every liter.

It is the difference between a project that looks good on paper and one that actually works for the community.

Lessons from the inspection line

Manuel’s work involves taking these high-level plans and checking them against reality. He shared practical insights that every project manager should hear.

He finds that simple habits—like a worker leaving a hose running or a farm using flood irrigation instead of drip systems—are the real enemies of sustainability.

His role is to instill a “compliance culture” where following the manual becomes a daily routine.

Yes because manuals and procedures are written guidelines, but we as human or professionals tend to not “use” them so much. It happens to me all the time, how many times your company internal procedure is simply not followed by almost anyone and the “chaos” and “improvisation” commands?

He has noticed a massive shift in the last decade; companies are now keeping detailed logs of water consumption and sewage generation not just to avoid fines, but because they realize that efficiency saves money and protects their reputation.

I remember projects back in 2017 where site control regarding water use and waste wasn’t really a priority, nobody paid much attention. Nowadays, it’s far more common to have clear records in place and a much stronger focus on monitoring and accountability.

Saudi water market trends

I had one last question prepared for Manuel. Since he’s been there since 2012, and I’ve seen the evolution myself since handling my first tender in the Middle East, I wanted his perspective.

So I asked him: “How do you see the market there nowadays? Do you feel the same way I do?”

Water market may be shifting fast. It’s no longer just about building desalination plants, success now depends on smart water management, efficiency, and reuse.

Opportunities may be emerging where few are looking.

Thank you!

Environmental compliance is a human effort, not just a legal one.

If we viewed every regulation not as a restriction, but as a tool to protect the “blue gold” of our future, how much more efficient could our projects become?

Easier said than done… but that’s exactly where the real challenge, and the real value lies.

Thanks all of your for reading, sharing with your friends, and engaging. I appreciate the messages I receive with your opinions, feedback, corrections and even suggestions of what we should cover.

Today I share our workshop about microtunneling at intake & outfall approaches in desalination and effluent outfall in coastal waste water treatment plants.

Key worldwide projects with this technique:

• Waste Water Treatment Plant Cambérène submarine outfall (Dakar, Senegal). 1,200 m long and a 2.6 m diameter under the Atlantic Ocean, which is not a friendly partner to deal with due to rough maritime conditions.

• SWRO Amaala Sustainable Project in Red Sea (Saudi Arabia). Look at the reinforced concrete pipe storage!

• Choutka Desalination Plant (Morocco), being the plant more than 30 m above the sea level, it is not much reasonable to destroy the shoreline to install the pipes in conventional method…

• Sorek Desalination Plant (Israel), it is the case study analysed in our workshop. It registered the world record in performance of tunneling.

• Atacama Desalination Plant (Chile), when you face Pacific Ocean and a complex rocky topography shoreline, much better to get independent from them….

This approach solves a major problem in the desalination sector:

Read more

I organized the site visit through our regional chapter of Young Water Professionals Spain, and around 20 people attended.

Above, you can find a short video. Our host, Nicolas Urgoiti, commissioned the plant back in 2005 and has been involved in its operation ever since.

He is one of those professionals whose level of experience is hard to find anywhere in the world.

I asked him to wear a microphone so I could capture a few key takeaways from the visit.

To really understand the plant, you first need to understand the story behind how the raw water reaches its inlet. So let’s start there.

Why brackish if it is surface water

It blew my mind:

To understand this, we need to go back to the 20th century.

As infrastructure developed alongside a demographic boom, Spain went through the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), followed by a dictatorship that lasted until 1975. In its later years, major hydraulic programs were launched to build reservoirs and reduce reliance on fragmented and variable local sources.

In this context, the Embalse del Guadalhorce system was developed to supply water to the growing city of Málaga. Alongside it, a conventional drinking water treatment plant—today known as “El Atabal”—was built in the 1970s, with typical processes: coagulation, settling (the picture below), and gravity filtration (explained later)..

These are the “clouds” that Nicolas mentioned in the video.

So by the mid-1970s, the system was in place.

But here’s the twist.

This reservoir system is affected by natural saline springs emerging from the surrounding geology. These springs can reach salinity levels above 100,000 mg/L TDS—almost three times seawater.

Hard to believe, but true. Bad luck.

These waters come from an aquifer that flows through Triassic formations rich in salts and gypsum. As the water passes through these rocks, it dissolves the minerals and carries them directly into the reservoir.

When the reservoir is at high capacity, this saline input is diluted and the blended water remains manageable.

However, during drought periods, when water levels drop, the relative impact of these saline inflows increases significantly, leading to much higher salinity in the raw water.

From the reservoir, water travels through a ~50 km open canal toward the treatment plant. Along the way:

• Farmers abstract water for irrigation

• When salinity rises, irrigation becomes unviable

There was even an attempt to solve the problem at the source:

• A brine bypass pipeline was built to divert the saline spring directly to the sea

• But the system ultimately failed for multiple reasons

So what do you do when your “freshwater” reservoir behaves like brackish water?

For years, up to around 2000, the system relied on:

• Blending strategies

• Operational adjustments

• What operators would call… a bit of “alchemy”

At the same time, groundwater wells were developed during severe droughts. These proved highly valuable and are now a key component to balance both quality and quantity.

Another challenge: time and unpredictability.

• Water takes a few hours to travel from the reservoir to the plant, so operator must anticipate what’s coming analyzing the water at the intake.

• Events like landslides or storms along the canal can suddenly spike turbidity and suspended solids. And sometimes this is detected only when the water is already arriving at the plant.

The turning point came in the early 2000s.

Due to persistent complaints about water quality from the citizens, it was decided to upgrade the plant.

A brackish water desalination system was added (commissioned around 2005), designed to treat up to 6,500 mg/L TDS.

Simple mechanical solutions sometimes outperform digital systems

One particularly interesting feature was the flow regulation system in the sand filters.

Instead of automated control valves, the filters use hydraulic siphon regulation.

“Aquazur V” gravity rapid sand filters with siphon-based level control of Degremont, now Suez.

The principle is simple:

• a siphon pipe removes water from the filter

• air admission into the siphon is controlled by a float

• by allowing more or less air, the flow rate changes.

As the filter clogs and head loss increases, the float adjusts the air intake and stabilizes the flow.

This system requires:

• no electricity

• minimal maintenance

• simple mechanical parts.

Robust engineering solutions sometimes rely on physics rather than electronics.

Energy recovery matters even in brackish desalination

Although energy consumption is lower than in seawater desalination, the plant still incorporates energy recovery turbines.

The Pelton turbines installed with the desalination system:

• recovered hydraulic energy from the reject stream

• paid back their investment within the design period

• continue to operate reliably decades later.

Their long-term performance highlights the value of simple and durable energy recovery systems.

Following our last piece on energy recovery innovation, I asked Nicolas why PX devices were not installed at the time.

The answer goes back to the early 2000s: PX technology was not yet fully proven or consolidated for brackish water applications, so a Pelton turbine from Calder (below picture) was selected instead.

Now the question is: after years of continued innovation, would PX devices perform better today and reduce OPEX?

Maybe yes, maybe not—it depends on the variable operating conditions.

However, when you factor in the current level of amortization and the additional costs of replacing the system, the existing turbines are still performing well. They’ve had no major maintenance issues.

It’s a good example of how, although our industry can change dramatically over 20 years, once infrastructure is built, it tends to stay.

Just like MSF plants in the Middle East, replacement often has to wait until the end of the asset’s lifetime, even if, if we were designing the plant today, the solution would likely be very different.

Smart hydraulics can reduce energy dependence

One of the usual design aspects of the plant is how much of the system works by gravity.

Before the desalination step:

• water flows through most of the treatment process without pumping.

Only when entering the reverse osmosis section in the intermediate pump station does the system begin to consume electricity.

This philosophy reflects classical hydraulic engineering, where energy efficiency is achieved through elevation differences rather than mechanical systems.

The consumption of the plant is around 0,8-1,3 kwh/m3 approximately.

Infrastructure evolves incrementally

The desalination plant was built in 2004 and has since been expanded.

Each membrane rack originally had 100 pressure vessel positions, but space was intentionally left for expansion.

In 2022 the plant increased capacity by filling those remaining positions, reaching 117 vessels per rack.

This expansion also required upgrading other equipment:

• booster pumps

• motors

• variable frequency drives (below picture located in the Electrical Room)

Many of us struggle with current projects where we need to leave reserve space, it becomes especially complicated when trying to integrate future capacity into present designs, but

Brackish desalination with surface water feed is one of the toughest scenarios

Nicolás described the plant in a memorable way in the video:

“This is a motocross plant.”

The analogy reflects the harsh operating conditions.

Compared with seawater desalination, this facility treats surface brackish water, which introduces several challenges simultaneously:

• high turbidity variability

• biological growth

• seasonal changes in water quality

• organic fouling risks.

While seawater is relatively stable, surface water brings dynamic and unpredictable loads.

As a result:

• membrane cleaning is more frequent

• pretreatment is critical

• operational vigilance is constant.

Membrane lifetime therefore depends heavily on operating conditions. The comparison used by the operator was striking:

The point is clear: lifetime depends on how aggressively they are used and under what conditions.

The control room

A very interesting part of any plant is what you could call its “brain.” As Nicolás pointed out, each part of a facility can be compared to a function in the human body, and the control room is clearly the brain.

What really caught my attention was a simple post in the room, referencing Homer Simpson in his iconic role as a nuclear plant operator.

It read:

It may sound humorous at first, but it carries a truth. Technical skills are essential, of course, but composure under pressure is what truly defines great operators.

So cheers to all plant and facility operators around the world, the people behind the scenes who make complex systems work, day in and day out, no matter the circumstances.

Remarks

You quickly realize that delivering water to your tap is a much bigger story than it seems.

Every case is different, and the more projects we study around the world, the more context we gain and the better prepared we are.

In this case, we see a mix of realities: infrastructure that failed due to unexpected salinity, alongside a hybrid plant (1970 + 2005) that continues to operate reliably despite far-from-ideal conditions.

Pressure on the system keeps increasing, and new plans for another desalination plant are already being considered—likely with a completely different design and equipment.

Although our industry is often seen as slow-moving, innovation always finds its way, consolidates, and ultimately shapes the future. Our role is to help guide both the renewal of existing assets and the development of new infrastructure.

Thanks to everyone who attended, and especially to Emasa and Nicolás for sharing such a valuable depth of knowledge.

One of our best workshops over the past three years, led by the unique Rolando Bosleman (difficult to find someone more expert in this planet in this topic), shared above as part of our Desalination MBA section, now feels even more relevant. It seems that Energy Recovery has once again pushed the boundaries, breaking the ceiling.

One of my friends—an energy engineer—told me a few weeks ago over a beer, he described this device as “energy perfection.” He said, “You know, from an energy standpoint, this thing is simply perfect, it’s insane.”

If you are following our publications, you’ll notice the increase of desalination as the major approach to improve “availability” of water in many countries.

This is an incredible flywheel in water technology, there has not been even time to consolidate the new PX Q400 in running operations, and now PX Q650 is here to improve once again energy consumption and probably water tariffs in big desalination plants.

I think today is a good moment to share with all of you the concept of the energy recovery system in desalination, which revolutionized the efficiency of Seawater Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) desalination, and what you should do now in your projects with this new size available in the market.

Read more

Despite limited financial incentives and reliance on NGOs and good-willed initiatives, this field is arguably the most impactful in our industry.

On this occasion, I’m sharing our podcast conversation with Jessey Nyamohachi from the Ryan’s Well Foundation.

Jessey’s insights highlight not only the technical challenges of bringing water to remote communities but also the human dimension, especially the gendered impact of water scarcity.

The first minute of the video summarize perfectly the 2026 World Water Day motto on gender, and the last 10 minutes showcase images of Ryan’s Well Foundation initiatives on the ground.

These professionals deserve a wider audience and recognition for their work.

The weight of the walk

Jessey shared a vivid memory from his childhood in rural Uganda.

Before school, he would spend hours walking to a well to fetch water.

By the time he arrived at his classroom, he was already physically exhausted.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, women and children spend an estimated 200 million hours every single day fetching water.

When we talk about “water stress,” we aren’t just talking about a lack of liquid in a pipe.

Why infrastructure fails without ownership

One of the most striking points Jessey made was about the “broken borehole” phenomenon. You can often find rural communities where a well was drilled years ago but now sits in disrepair.

This usually happens when an organization installs a solution without involving the local people.

He emphasized that if a community feels a project belongs to “the NGO” and not to them, they won’t maintain it.

The Ryan’s Well Foundation focuses heavily on creating water committees, often led by women, to ensure the community has the tools and the desire to keep the water flowing long after the technicians leave.

Choosing the right tool for the terrain

There is no “one size fits all” solution for water access. Jessey explained how their technical approach changes based on the local geography.

In Northern Uganda, where the water table is deep, they drill deep wells.

In Western Uganda, where groundwater is closer to the surface, they focus on protected springs.

We also discussed rainwater harvesting. In areas with heavy seasonal rains, catching water from rooftops and storing it in large tanks is a simple, low-maintenance way to provide clean water.

It reminds us that sometimes the best engineering isn’t the most complex, but the most appropriate for the environment.

The link between water and dignity

Beyond the drinking water itself, we touched on the critical role of sanitation.

Jessey shared examples of gender-sensitive and disability-sensitive latrines. In many schools, a lack of private, clean toilets is a leading reason why girls stop attending once they reach puberty.

When we provide a school with a rainwater tank and a hand-washing station, we aren’t just improving health statistics. We are creating an environment where children can stay in school and live with dignity.

Water is the foundation upon which every other part of development such as health, education, and economy is built.

What about the cities in Uganda

I think it is interesting to look also at Uganda’s water utilities. Although our episode focuses on where the network ends and where utilities fail to reach, because of the reasons we discussed, Uganda is actually one of the major reference cases in the sector.

You know urban water management in developing countries often struggles with the same problems: weak institutions, poor billing systems, high losses, and limited investment.

It is an interesting case where a poorly performing public utility managed to turn itself around. The common approach in such situations is often to rely on the private sector to drive improvements.

However, this case shows that it is also possible to significantly improve a public utility through internal reforms, by strengthening management, incentives, and accountability from within the organization.

In the 1990s, Uganda’s urban water utility was a classic example.

The National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC), responsible for supplying cities such as Kampala, suffered from low service coverage, high water losses, and poor financial performance.

Like many public utilities across the Global South, it was widely seen as inefficient and unsustainable.

The turning point came with a management reform led by William T. Muhairwe.

Rather than privatizing the system, the reform focused on internal performance management.

The utility introduced clear targets for each city operation, performance contracts for managers, strict monitoring of indicators such as non-revenue water and billing efficiency, and incentive systems for staff.

Operational autonomy increased, while accountability for results became much stricter.

The results were striking. Over the following years, NWSC expanded service to many more urban centers, dramatically increased the number of household connections, and improved financial sustainability.

Staff productivity improved, revenue collection strengthened, and the utility became one of the most studied reform cases in the global water sector. Within Africa, it began to be seen as one of the most competent public water utilities.

Eventually the rapid gains slowed and performance stabilized as the system matured and expansion became more complex. Leadership also changed over time. Yet the institutional culture introduced during the reform period proved durable.

Mr. Muhairwe left on 2013, he has received multiple international honors, including recognition among Water and Wastewater International’s “Top 25 Industry Leaders.” His book Making Public Enterprises Work: From Despair to Promise chronicles the NWSC transformatio, I’ve not read yet, but I add in our library to follow-up.

Today, Uganda’s urban water management is often cited as evidence that public utilities can improve dramatically when management incentives, operational autonomy, and performance monitoring are aligned.

The reforms did not solve every challenge, but they left a lasting institutional legacy that continues to shape urban water services in the country.

Thanks for reading, sharing and engaging, and happy world water day!

Today we share a keynote by Alberto Kresse, the president of ACADES.

Alberto is a leading figure in water infrastructure, and his perspective on the current state of the industry is vital.

The context for this discussion is urgent.

Chile is facing a structural water deficit that no longer depends on whether it rains a little more or less each winter.

Our traditional sources are shrinking, and the water sector is looking for a way to decouple our growth from the unpredictability of the climate.

Desalination has emerged as the most viable answer, but it is a topic often clouded by myths and technical misunderstandings.

What happened in Acades Congress 2026?

Desalination is moving from a niche water solution to a core piece of economic infrastructure, particularly in water-stressed regions like Chile and much of Latin America.

Rather than focusing only on membranes and pumps, the discussions revolve around how desalination fits into growth, financing, energy systems, and environmental governance.

Here are the main themes shaping the conversation.

Desalination as an engine for economic growth

One of the central themes of the congress is “Water for Growth”, framing water supply as a key driver of economic development.

Chile is a particularly relevant case. Mining operations in the country are increasingly shifting away from continental water sources and relying instead on seawater and desalination.

Several sessions focused on:

• how the mining sector is deploying desalination

• the infrastructure required to move water inland

• how non-conventional water sources can sustain industrial growth

The underlying message is clear:

desalination is becoming productive infrastructure.

The big question: who pays for desalination?

Another major topic throughout the congress is the economics of desalinated water.

Issues such as:

• the cost of desalination and reuse

• project finance and bankability

• risk allocation in infrastructure contracts

• public–private partnership models

In other words, the debate has moved beyond whether desalination works technically.

The real question now is:

how to finance water systems at regional scale.

Shared infrastructure and large water transport systems

A particularly interesting theme is the concept of shared desalination infrastructure.

Instead of building one plant for one user, the industry is increasingly discussing:

• large desalination hubs

• pipelines transporting water hundreds of kilometers

• supply systems serving multiple industries and cities

This represents a shift toward regional water systems, where desalinated water becomes part of a broader infrastructure network.

Environmental impact and social license

Environmental considerations also occupy a prominent place in this field.

Discussions included:

• the environmental footprint of desalination

• brine discharge and ocean impacts

• evidence-based regulation

An emerging topic is “brine mining”, the idea of extracting valuable minerals from desalination brine.

desalination is increasingly viewed as part of a circular water economy rather than a linear process.

New applications: agriculture and small-scale desalination

While mining dominates the conversation, the congress also explored other applications such as:

• desalinated water for agriculture

• decentralized and small-scale desalination systems

• integration between desalination and water reuse

desalination technologies are beginning to diversify and move into smaller, more distributed systems.

The energy–water nexus

Another recurring topic is the relationship between energy and desalination.

A full panel addressed the “energy of water”, highlighting how closely the two systems are linked.

Key issues include:

• energy efficiency

• renewable energy integration

• the role of electricity costs in water pricing

At its core, desalination is fundamentally an energy transformation process.

The end of our dependence on rain

For a long time, we managed water based on the hope of a wet winter. Alberto points out that this is no longer a sustainable strategy.

The primary benefit of desalination is that it provides a constant supply of water regardless of weather patterns.

In places like Caldera, we are already seeing this work. Their plant was recognized globally because it proved that we can secure the water supply for an entire population through technology.

It changes the mindset from managing scarcity to managing a reliable industrial process.

Facing the myths about brine and the ocean

One of the biggest hurdles for new projects is the public perception of environmental impact.

Alberto addressed the common fear that brine is a “toxic sludge” that destroys marine life.

The reality is much more boring but also more encouraging. When managed with modern engineering, the salt returned to the sea dilutes quickly and does not create the “dead zones” people fear.

Understanding the science behind these discharge systems is crucial if we want to move past the emotional arguments that often stall necessary infrastructure.

Energy as the main challenge

While the environmental impact is often overstated, the energy cost of desalination is a real factor we must solve.

Moving and treating seawater requires a lot of power.

Alberto emphasizes that Chile’s leadership in renewable energy is our greatest advantage here.

By pairing desalination plants with solar and wind power, we can lower the carbon footprint of our water.

Building a culture of water security

Technology is only half of the solution.

Alberto’s insights remind me that we need a regulatory and social framework that supports these large scale projects.

We have to show that these plants are not just for mining or industry, but are the backbone of human consumption and food security for the coming decades.

Reflection

After listening to Alberto, I am left thinking about how we talk about water to people who are not engineers.

We often focus on the crisis, but we have the tools to build a different future.

What is the biggest misconception about desalination that you have encountered in your work?

Carlos is a key figure in the Chilean water sector, a region that has become a global laboratory for water management due to its extreme geographical contrasts.

I wanted to have this conversation because Chile represents both a warning and a roadmap for the rest of the world.

With over 4,000 kilometers of coastline and the most arid desert on earth, they are forced to innovate out of necessity.

As we face increasing water stress globally, understanding how Chile balances industrial growth with community needs is essential for anyone working in this business.

The reality of a moving drought

Chile is currently witnessing a geographical shift in its water availability.

Historically, the north was the desert and the south was the water reservoir.

However, the “water stress” is now migrating toward the central regions where the majority of the population and businesses are concentrated.

Carlos explained that we can no longer rely on single sources like rainfall or mountain runoff. The climate has become too volatile.

In South America, phenomena like El Niño and La Niña are becoming more frequent and intense. One year a region faces a historic drought, and the next it deals with flooding.

This volatility is the primary driver for a diversified water portfolio where desalination acts as a stable, weather-independent baseline.

Desalination is no longer just for mining

For a long time, desalination in Chile was synonymous with the mining industry.

They even developed the technology to pump water from sea level up to 5,000 meters into the Andes.

However, the trend is changing. While mining is decreasing its use of continental water and increasing its use of seawater, we are now seeing “desalination for people.”

Plants are being built to supply entire cities and small coastal communities. This shift proves that the technology has matured enough to be a viable solution for public consumption, not just industrial output.

Dealing with the myths of brine and energy

The biggest hurdle for new projects is often social acceptance rather than engineering.

Carlos was very clear about the two main “ghosts” that haunt desalination: brine discharge and energy consumption.

He shared a powerful perspective on brine: if managed correctly with proper diffusers, the impact area is no larger than a quarter of a football field in a vast ocean.

It is essentially seawater with a higher salt concentration, not a toxic chemical waste.

Regarding energy, he used a simple analogy: desalting enough water for a household is equivalent to running a space heater or an iron for an hour.

When we frame it that way, the “high cost” of water feels much more like a manageable trade-off for survival in a desert.

The bottleneck of bureaucracy and education

A recurring theme in our talk was the gap between technical readiness and administrative speed.

In Chile, a project can be environmentally sound and technically perfect, yet it might sit in a queue behind a shopping mall or a housing development.

There is also a significant need for better education among the authorities who evaluate these projects.

Carlos noted that while countries like Spain or Israel have decades of specialized university training in water, Latin America is still catching up.

This lack of specialized knowledge often leads to fear-based rejections or delays.

Reflection

We often wait until the taps run dry to support “expensive” or “complex” infrastructure projects.

Chile has shown that the public-private model works and that the technology is ready. But as Carlos said, we need to stop looking at the sky for rain and start looking at the sea.