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The Water Council - Growth & Progress in 2024

At the end of every year, I look back at what we’ve accomplished and marvel at how much has been done with a very small – but exceptionally committed – staff.

The Water Council - Growth & Progress in 2024
EMERYVILLE, Calif.,

At the end of every year, I look back at what we’ve accomplished and marvel at how much has been done with a very small – but exceptionally committed – staff. People are often surprised to learn that we operate with just six full-time staff members and a couple of interns in Milwaukee, plus the valuable help from our European representative, Beverley Ferrara, and technical consultant, Barry Liner.

The Water Council Board and I are very proud of and greatly appreciate the tireless work that the team provides, playing an important part in solving global water challenges by driving freshwater technologies and advancing stewardship across the U.S. and abroad. Read on to learn how we did that in 2024.

Regional innovation cluster award

One of our biggest highlights occurred this fall when we received a U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Regional Innovation Cluster contract as a mature water technology cluster. Our vice president of economic development and innovation, Karen Frost, drafted an exceptional proposal in a short amount of time, leading us to receive one of 14 awards and the only one focused on water.

Through this five-year award, we will build on our long-established innovation platform by offering increased support for U.S. water technology businesses from early-stage startups to established small and medium-sized enterprises. We also have a keen interest in assisting foreign companies that are seeking to establish operations in the U.S. This includes enhanced offerings in our BREW 2.0 Post-Accelerator, matchmaking and training, customized support and resources for small businesses, capacity-building and providing access to new market resources.

We are already hard at work growing our small business offerings by expanding our internal support and creating a special section on our website for small businesses. Watch for more from this program in 2025.

water + energy forward

2024 marked the second year of progress on our Water + Energy Forward Engine. In May 2023, we received an inaugural Development Award from the National Science Foundation to build a regional innovation engine to help small and medium-sized businesses meet their water and energy needs.

Although we learned this last October that we won’t receive a launch award that would have helped fund the engine in future years, many positives came out of this two-year process, including:

  • Launch of the Water & Wastewater Workforce Center, a collaboration between Veolia North America and The Water Council that will help address urgent workforce needs in the water sector.
  • Announcement from the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) of a $13 million permanent pilot facility to help companies test emerging water technologies. The Water Council will continue to work closely with MMSD as it finalizes designs for the facility and seeks pilot projects.
  • New or strengthened partnerships with many organizations, including Microsoft, Rockwell Automation, the Water Environment Federation and Wisconsin’s top research universities.
  • Insight into persistent problems in the water and energy sector, including workforce development and water and energy resiliency for small businesses, and potential solutions, such as circular watershed economies.

The Water Council and our other engine leaders plan to keep the momentum going on key initiatives that grew out of this work.

nexus summit

Another milestone this year was our first Nexus Sustainability Leaders Summit, held in collaboration with the Marquette University College of Business’ Sustainability Lab. This event built on our long-time Water Leaders Summit and Marquette’s Sustainability 2.0 Conference. The event was a success, with strong attendance (a 50 percent increase over last year’s Water Leaders Summit), engaging speakers, and lots of discussion and new connections made in the audience. We learned a lot with the first combined event and expect to come back better than ever next year.

training future water workforce

As I mentioned, one of the highlights to come out of our Water + Energy Forward Engine is collaborative effort toward growing the water workforce. This year, we received a grant to support that effort through a federal appropriation supported by U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin.

The $300,000 grant allows us to work with partners such as Community Water Services, Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, Milwaukee Water Works and the Milwaukee Health Department to help students at three Milwaukee high schools learn about water monitoring and water sector employment.

innovation

It was another fantastic year for our innovation programming. Our BREW 2.0 Post-Accelerator included startups from the U.S., Canada, France and Ireland in areas such as artificial intelligence for water utilities, nutrient-harvesting from algae and water-saving devices. GKinetic Energy of Ireland, which provides clean energy generation from manmade and natural waterways, announced plans in fall to launch its U.S. operations from The Water Council’s headquarters at the Global Water Center.

Startups have until Jan. 3 to apply to our 2025 BREW cohort. Late-stage startups that are market-ready or in-market with early sales are encouraged to apply. We are grateful to our BREW sponsors  Xylem and Beckhoff Automation as well as our programming partner Thales Water Advisors.

We also ran two Tech Challenges this year, receiving applications from 11 countries. PAGE Technologies of Colorado won our spring challenge focused on water quality sensors. We are within days of naming the winners of our fall challenge focused on the sensing, treatment and removal of microplastics and nanoplastics.

If your company is looking to identify that “needle in the haystack” to augment your research and development, contact Karen Frost and she can fill you in on how to participate in defining the challenge topics and get access to all the technologies submitted to the Tech Challenge. Our sponsors repeatedly tell us that the majority of the companies that apply are new to their R&D teams. As one sponsor has said, “You don’t know what you don’t know.”

Tech Challenge was sponsored in 2024 by A. O. Smith Corporation, Badger Meter and Watts Water Technologies. We’re excited to announce an additional sponsor in 2025, Xylem. Thank you for your support and participation!

water stewardship

Our WAVE: Water Stewardship Verified program continues to grow as companies increasingly realize the potential risks of too little water, too much water or poor quality in the freshwater resources at their facilities and in their supply chains. Lately we’ve noticed more interest from companies affected by the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. By some estimates, nearly 3,000 U.S.-based companies will need to start reporting to the EU on their water and biodiversity impacts in addition to 50,000 EU companies.

Get in contact with Matt Howard, our vice president of water stewardship, if your company is impacted by these EU regulations. My advice is that if you are a supplier to these U.S. or EU-based companies, it is also well worth contacting Matt to check on your water stewardship plan. In fact, we have a webinar coming up Jan. 27 to help you learn all about WAVE.

This year, we welcomed Clearwater Paper, Milo’s Tea Company, Rockwell Automation and Zurn Elkay Water Solutions as new participants in WAVE.

I’m also happy to report that both BlueTriton Brands and Primo Water recently became WAVE Verified, after independent verification by SCS Global Services. Following a transaction last month, the two companies are now known as Primo Brands, a leading branded beverage company with a focus on healthy hydration.

Clearwater Paper, Ecolab and KPMG also completed WAVE verification this year, and Watts Water Technologies became the first company to be re-verified to the program.

The Water Council and SCS Global Services, the exclusive verification partner for WAVE, will be launching a more closely coordinated communications campaign on all things water stewardship. Keep watch for new WAVE-related service offerings and a more holistic approach to water stewardship in partnership with SCS.

Meanwhile, Matt stayed busy this year spreading awareness of the importance of water stewardship at sustainability and industrial events across the country. Recently, he appeared on an episode of EARTH with John Holden that focused on Primo Brands – a WAVE participant – and its sustainability efforts. Check it out here.

Matt also continued his work with the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and Suppliers Partnership for the Environment (SP) on building comprehensive water stewardship programs for the chemistry and automotive sectors. Matt and the ACC team continue to build out the suite of tools and resources for their members focusing on the site-level Water Body Risk Assessment protocol. Similarly, Matt is working with SP to advance water stewardship best practices in the automotive value chain with a key deliverable this year being a water metrics mapping exercise looking at 15 key voluntary and regulatory reporting frameworks. Stay tuned; in 2025 we will be expanding our association work with a new partner!

Also starting in 2025, we are launching new online, asynchronous training modules in partnership with American National Standards Institute (ANSI)/ANSI National Accreditation Board (ANAB). These modules cover enterprise to site-level water stewardship best practices and are geared toward professionals in the sustainability field.

Finally, The Water Council continued its support for the Great Lakes Water Innovation and Stewardship Exchange, or Great Lakes WISE, administered by the Council of the Great Lakes Region. This year, the founding corporate partners of the exchange were announced: A. O. Smith Corporation, Sloan, Veolia North America, Watts Water Technologies, and BlueTriton Brands (now Primo Brands).

international work

We are thrilled that our SBA award will help support our European representative, Beverley Ferrara, in her important work connecting The Water Council with overseas water technology companies and organizations. This year, she represented us at events in Ireland, Spain, Germany and more. She also works with our 24 overseas members and U.S. members looking for help exporting their products to Europe.

We also continued our partnership with Phuket, Thailand, as part of the U.S. Water Partnership’s Water Smart Engagements program, funded by the U.S. State Department. Our communications director, Stacy Vogel Davis, and I visited Phuket to meet with water officials there about challenges they face. We were shocked to see the low reservoir levels as the rainy season that was supposed to have started weeks ago hadn’t yet arrived. Afterward, we traveled with two Phuket representatives to Singapore International Water Week.

New Members

Our membership this year reached 159 members, including three new large corporations – Veralto, Wilo and Zurn Elkay.

This month, we welcome new members:

  • Hunter Crown, LLC, a recruiter for the water and wastewater industry based in Maryland
  • Lakeside Water Treatment, a water treatment solutions provider based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that specializes in water softeners, reverse osmosis systems and multimedia filtration
  • Biobox Water, a Spanish company that creates containerized or prefabricated modularized water treatment plants

Member news & opportunities

We value all our members, from start-ups to established small and medium-sized businesses to international corporations. From all of us at The Water Council, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and happy New Year!