I sat down with two members of our own community who decided to step forward and share what they know.
The topic: water stewardship and corporate water.
As many of you know, I find this field fascinating.
I would go as far as calling it one of the most relevant “revolutions” happening in our industry right now.
Corporations, data centers, utilities, NGOs and regulators are suddenly talking about the same resource, sometimes event in the same room :)
But it is also a field where it is very easy to be misled.
Water positive, replenishment, offsets, credits, scopes, VWBA, AWS, CDP, CSRD...
Unless you are on the front line, the terminology alone can leave you with more doubts than answers.
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So I brought two people who are on that front line.
Both have been genuinely supportive of The Water MBA since the early days, and I think they can help all of us build real knowledge on this topic.
Their perspectives are complementary: one comes from science and utilities, the other from civil engineering and corporate strategy.
I have adapted my usual approach a little for this essay. At the end, I include the key questions we should ask ourselves on each topic.
I believe writing down the right questions is one of the best ways to give our brains a real exercise, so I invite you to take a pen and try to answer them.
Who is Semyon Chaymann
Semyon describes himself as a “water generalist”.
He is not an engineer but a scientist by training, with a bachelor’s in environmental science from McGill University and a master’s in integrated water resource management.
He splits his life between Canada and Portugal, which already tells you something about how global this conversation is.
He brings more than fifteen years of experience in water infrastructure planning and hydraulic modeling.
Most of that time was spent helping Canadian municipalities plan their water systems 20, 30, 40 and even 50 years into the future, building the hydraulic models that let them manage and optimize distribution networks.
For the past couple of years he has worked closely with Baseform, a software-as-a-service company focused on water loss reduction and predictive analytics for utilities.
His current obsession, and the reason I invited him, is the intersection between two worlds that rarely talk to each other: utilities that need funding to fix their infrastructure, and corporations that need credible ways to replenish the water they consume.
“The next challenge is connecting companies with utilities”
Semyon’s work explores the intersection of corporate water stewardship and water-loss reduction.
Why it matters: Reducing non-revenue water could connect corporate replenishment commitments with measurable improvements to existing municipal infrastructure.
I have to say: I love his website, Hydralink Infrastructure Solutions. It explains water stewardship in plain, entertaining terms, which is much harder than it sounds. Take a look.
Who is Vasilisa Gorbolskaya
Vasilisa is a civil engineer trained at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and she started her career in construction.
She entered the water world through green and gray infrastructure, working on flood prevention and risk reduction for local communities.
She then moved into water consulting and has spent the last four years at ERM, focused on corporate water strategies.
Her work has two sides: water replenishment, and water efficiency across portfolios of real assets.
In practice that means helping companies set water positive goals, reduce their own use, and select fit-for-purpose replenishment projects, both nature-based and infrastructure-based.
Her client profile has shifted a lot in those four years.
It started with large, asset-heavy organizations, from higher education to manufacturing.
Increasingly, the conversation is about tech and AI, and the public debate around data centers and water demand.
A necessary disclaimer: all opinions she shared are her own and do not represent ERM.
Some of you will remember that Vasilisa and I wrote a piece together almost a year ago on finance meeting water.
It was one of my very first collaborations, and it was her idea.
Many of you wrote to me saying “finally someone is writing about this”.
Sometimes one plus one is not two, it is three or four.
Leave the water as good as you found it
I started with the most basic question, because I see many members confusing water stewardship with corporate water, or with framework compliance.
What does it actually mean?
Semyon’s answer was refreshingly simple.
Water stewardship is understanding your impact on water resources: how much you take, how much you discharge, and how much water is hidden in what you eat, wear and make.
Everything has a water footprint, from a bottle of water to the clothes we wear.
Then comes the part that turns awareness into responsibility: we must take action to make sure those resources stay as good as when we found them.
Vasilisa added the corporate lens: stewardship is the responsible use of a shared resource, grounded in the local context. That word, shared, is the key.
A company does not own the river or the aquifer. It shares them with farmers, cities and ecosystems.
Water stewardship is about shared responsibility
“A responsible use of a shared resource, grounded in the local context.”
Vasilisa Gorbolskaya, 18:35–19:00.
Corporate water strategy cannot be separated from municipalities, local communities, regulators and the wider watershed.
Compliance is not hydrology
There is a sentence on Semyon’s website that stuck with me.
Paraphrasing:
“frameworks are valuable, but they are principle-based and focused on disclosure rather than basin-level outcomes. A project can be fully framework-compliant while the hydrology of its catchment remains unverified.”
Compliance doesn’t necessarily mean impact
A company can satisfy reporting requirements without demonstrating that its local water resources are actually improving.
You can disclose a number, report it through a recognized framework, and still be wrong when someone checks it with an engineering approach.
Semyon pointed out that some large tech companies are now facing backlash precisely because their reported water figures are not backed by the underlying data.
A precedent is being set, and it will not stay in tech.
His answer is to bring engineering practices that utilities already master into the stewardship world.
Non-revenue water is the clearest example: volumetric accounting methods allow companies to claim benefits from reducing utility losses.
But as he put it:
Reporting numbers is the easy part
“It’s easy just to report the numbers, but it’s very difficult to actually understand what those numbers mean.”
Semyon Chaymann, around 16:35–17:30.
Water accounting requires meaningful baselines, credible measurements and evidence of outcomes, not just disclosure.
And then the principle everyone repeats, but not everyone applies: it has to happen at basin level.
Buying credits in a different watershed from the one you draw from does not reflect how the water cycle works.
Water is not carbon: the search for a common language
Both guests kept coming back to the same idea: the field does not yet speak one language.
Today, many “water positive” definitions are written by the companies themselves, on their own websites, tied to their own accounting frameworks.
Vasilisa was very honest about it: we are still feeling our way through a sensitive area.
The instinct is to copy the carbon market. It is understandable, because carbon already has scopes, credits, registries and retirement.
But water has a property carbon does not: it is not fungible.
A tonne of CO2 avoided in Brazil counts the same as one avoided in Spain. A cubic metre saved in the Guadalquivir does nothing for an aquifer in Arizona.
Water cannot be offset like carbon
Vasilisa mentioned that, according to her, WRI announced around the end of April 2026 an initiative to deliver common definitions that borrow the language of carbon while respecting this local nature of water.
She sees it as one of the fundamental building blocks to move forward.
With shared definitions, non-revenue water reductions, nature-based solutions and WASH projects could be recognized, certified and retired as credits with real trust behind them.
The second challenge she raised is less technical and more practical:
Where are the projects? Buyers need to find credible, local projects, and the public needs to trust the math.
If Alejandro Sturniolo is reading this, I’d appreciate hearing whether this is the missing piece of the puzzle that AquaPositive brings to the “match.”
Without both, every new “water positive” claim is one headline away from a public outcry.
Scope 1, 2, 3... now for water
A few weeks ago, a friend who manages water for data center developments in the US told me that the next big thing was “Scope 2”.
I had no idea what he meant.
Days later, social media was full of it: the debate is moving from cooling water to the water embedded in the energy that data centers consume.
This part of the conversation was a great example of a field still defining itself.
Vasilisa gave a first explanation, Semyon refined it, and at the end of the recording Vasilisa asked for one more minute to set the definitions straight for listeners.
It shows how fresh this language is, even for those working with it every day.
Here is the consolidated version, mirroring the carbon scopes:
Scope 1, direct operations. Water withdrawn, consumed and discharged at the facility, from any source: a well, a river or lake intake, or municipal supply.
Scope 2, purchased inputs. Water embedded in the electricity the facility buys. For a data center, the water used to generate the power it consumes. This is where the conversation is heading right now.
Scope 3, value chain. Water embodied in raw materials and products, upstream and downstream. Think polysilicon, metals and semiconductors that end up inside the servers.
The alphabet soup of frameworks
I can list the frameworks. What I could not tell you before this conversation is when to use each one. So I asked.
Semyon’s first point reframes everything: almost all of them are voluntary.
The exception is the European disclosure regime, which is becoming mandatory for larger companies.
Very few people are fluent in all of them at once. Which one applies depends on where the company operates, its history, and its ambitions for disclosure.
Vasilisa gave the practitioner’s map, based on her own experience:
VWBA (Volumetric Water Benefit Accounting), now in version 2.0. A six-step process to identify, verify and report replenishment benefits, so the impact is certifiable. It is the one she works with most, mainly for corporate replenishment and water positive programs.
AWS Standard (Alliance for Water Stewardship). An audited, facility-level certification. If a site claims to be “AWS certified”, it has gone through a demanding process involving both the operator and the corporate sponsor.
CDP. A disclosure framework built on quantitative data: water withdrawal, consumption and discharge, reported annually.
CSRD. The EU sustainability reporting directive, mandatory for large companies, with data requirements close to CDP.
SCS Global. A certification body she has not worked with directly, but which, as far as she knows, is involved in developing the common scope definitions.
A bit of history I did not know: the VWBA itself traces back to Coca-Cola’s replenishment efforts around 2007. The tool was born in beverages and is now being stretched to fit hyperscalers.
Where stewardship meets the ground: aquifer recharge
Behind every credit there has to be a real project.
Non-revenue water reduction is one.
Managed aquifer recharge is another, and it hits close to home: farmers in my own local community are struggling with groundwater and asking exactly these questions.
Semyon has seen it from two angles.
First, a viability study for aquifer storage and recharge in Barbados, a water-scarce, densely populated and very flat island that relies heavily on groundwater, plus brackish water desalination.
Rain filters naturally through the limestone karst, so the groundwater is perceived as clean and is simply chlorinated. The idea is to capture rainwater that today runs off to the ocean and put it back underground.
The integrated water resource management lens immediately complicates things. Rainfall is seasonal, so you need storage. Storage needs land, which a dense island lacks. And open reservoirs in a tropical climate can become breeding grounds for mosquitoes carrying dengue or chikungunya. A water solution can create a health problem.
Second, a full-scale aquifer storage and recharge plant in Wichita, Kansas. There, water is diverted from a river during the months it flows, treated with ultrafiltration membranes, and injected into the aquifer. What amazed him was a complete treatment plant designed not for drinking, but for feeding an aquifer.
His honest caveat: we need a hydrogeologist in the room. Water moves underground in different directions, and someone can drill a well next to your recharge site and pump out what you are putting in. Monitoring and governance matter as much as technology.
“Water positive by 2030”: skeptical but optimistic
I closed with the polemic question.
When you read “water positive by 2030” on a corporate website, what do you really feel? Do you nod, or do you laugh?
Semyon was direct: he is very skeptical, unless the company has a real track record in corporate water stewardship.
For him the statement raises more questions than it answers.
What is your definition of water positive? Which projects? How much are you investing, and where? Will those projects actually deliver their replenishment by 2030?
Interestingly, he treats that skepticism as an opportunity: every bold claim is an invitation to dig into that company’s real water situation.
Vasilisa came from a similar place but landed somewhere more hopeful.
Because water is not fungible, a company must find projects in the same basins as its facilities, and that is easier in some basins than in others.
It depends on whether local developers exist and whether certification bodies can verify the benefits.
Companies with long-standing local relationships and a proven record of reducing their own direct use are better placed.
Still, she believes it is achievable.
Hyperscalers are already announcing deals with municipalities and NGOs, and buyers are actively asking where such projects exist, which will pull more funding and more partnerships.
The real question, in the end, is accounting and certification.
Her verdict: hard but doable. Or, as she summed it up, skeptical but optimistic.
Questions we should ask ourselves
On what water stewardship means
Do I know the water footprint of my own project, beyond the volume on the water bill?
When I say “stewardship”, do I mean managing water, or managing the reporting of water?
Who else depends on the same source I am using, and have I ever spoken to them?
On compliance versus real basin outcomes
If an independent hydrologist audited my reported figures tomorrow, would they hold?
What baseline am I measuring against, and who decided it?
Is my benefit happening in the same basin as my impact, or only on the same spreadsheet?
On a common language
When I read “water positive”, do I know whose definition is behind it?
Am I importing carbon logic into a problem that is fundamentally local?
As engineers and utilities, are we making our projects visible to the buyers who are looking for them?
On water scopes
Do I know which of my water impacts sit in Scope 1, 2 or 3?
If clients start asking for the water embedded in our energy, do we have the data?
Am I ready for a world where a data center’s “water problem” is actually an energy procurement decision?
On frameworks
Am I reporting under a framework because it fits my impact, or because it is the one everybody uses?
What does “voluntary” really mean when investors, regulators and communities are watching?
If I joined a stewardship team tomorrow, which of these could I actually work with?
On aquifer recharge
Could the surplus water we waste in wet months be our dry-season reserve?
Who owns the water once it is underground, and who protects it from the neighbour’s well?
Are we solving a water problem while creating a health, land or governance problem?
On “water positive by 2030”
When I see a 2030 pledge, do I look for the projects, or just for the logo?
Could my utility, my project or my company be the local counterpart those buyers are searching for?
Where to meet them
We are a digital community, but nothing replaces meeting in person.
Vasilisa’s conference calendar is not closed yet; she will announce events on her LinkedIn. The easiest way to reach her is LinkedIn or our WhatsApp group.
She is also in for The Water MBA gathering I am planning in Spain around the 2030 World Cup, being all water positive.
By then, she joked, we will know if she was optimistic and right, or optimistic and naive.
Semyon will be at the Canadian Water and Wastewater Association annual conference in Halifax in November, and at the Rebuild Ukraine conference in Warsaw.
He is developing water strategies for Ukrainian municipalities, and he found it deeply uplifting that, even in wartime, water stays at the forefront of planning for the future.
Otherwise, you can grab a coffee or a beer with him in Toronto or Lisbon.
Semyon and Vasilisa, thank you for your generosity.
This is how The Water MBA grows: members sharing what they know so the rest of us close our own knowledge gaps.
I hope this is only the second (after Chile episode) of many collaborations.
Key quotes
Minutes mark where each answer starts in the episode. Quotes are lightly edited for readability.
On what water stewardship means
“This is the intersection that I’m interested in: tying in utilities with corporate water stewardship.”
— Semyon Chaymann, min 02:37
“We also have responsibility to take action to make sure that those resources are as good as when we found them.”
— Semyon Chaymann, min 11:44
“Water stewardship is seen as a responsible use of a shared resource, grounded in the local context.”
— Vasilisa Gorbolskaya, min 18:35
On compliance versus real basin outcomes
“It’s easy just to report the numbers, but it’s very difficult to actually understand what those numbers mean.”
— Semyon Chaymann, min 16:35
“It has to be on a basin level. Water is very local. It is based on the watershed.”
— Semyon Chaymann, min 16:35
On a common language
“A lot of the time definitions are stated by the companies themselves on their websites, tied to their own accounting frameworks.”
— Vasilisa Gorbolskaya, min 21:24
On water scopes
“Decoupling energy growth from water dependency.”
— Vasilisa Gorbolskaya, min 26:34
“Embodied water is probably the least spoken-about aspect of water stewardship.”
— Vasilisa Gorbolskaya, min 52:56
On frameworks
“All of the frameworks are voluntary.”
— Semyon Chaymann, min 28:30
On aquifer recharge
“A whole treatment plant designed just for treatment of water, not for consumption, but for pumping into the aquifer.”
— Semyon Chaymann, min 35:37
On “water positive by 2030”
“I’m very skeptical when I see those kinds of statements.”
— Semyon Chaymann, min 43:20
“Hard but doable. Skeptical but optimistic, probably to sum it up.”
— Vasilisa Gorbolskaya, min 47:20
On water in times of crisis
“Even in that kind of environment, they are still thinking about water management and planning for the future.”
— Semyon Chaymann, min 50:40
