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

How do you manage an aquifer nobody can see, and what changes when iFlux measures how its groundwater moves?iFlux is a Belgian company that measures how groundwater moves: its speed, its direction, and how much contamination travels with it. Most tools only give snapshots, a water table level here, a nitrate concentration there, while groundwater flows anywhere from 2 centimeters to 2 meters a day. So I sat down with its CEO to find out what measuring that movement changes.Christian Montag joined iFlux in 2023 as operations director, coming from lean consulting with no background in hydrogeology, raised the round that brought in PureTerra as lead investor, then took over as CEO from co-founder Tim.🌶️ KEY SPICES 🌶️🌊 Flux versus flow: cover half a hose with your thumb and the same water comes out at a different speed, which is what happens to groundwater squeezing through sand and sediment🗺️ My dad's 35-kilometer pollution plume in eastern France, and why every new sampling campaign drifted from what his model predicted📍 Why PFAS sitting still is a smaller risk than the same PFAS moving toward a river, a town or a nature reserve💧 A managed aquifer recharge site in the Netherlands, where river water filters through the ground before it becomes drinking water, and the three questions it needed answered🏭 Groundwater pumping on a worst-case permit: why an industrial site may pump in the wrong places for years and still prefer not to know✅ How flux data let one industrial site prove its cleanup had worked and switch to monitoring, saving 90 to 95% of the cost🔬 3.6 million euros from the European Innovation Council (EIC), and full-scale deployments at three drinking water utilities🤝 Why environmental consultants are iFlux's route to scale, and whether its data platform helps them or competes with them⛏️ Oil and gas, mining and EIT Raw Materials: the markets I kept pushing Christian toward📈 The pitch: 27% growth last year, 75% targeted this year, and a 5 million raise that could open up to 7 million🏷️ The exit landscape, from AEM buying Van Essen Instruments to Saur buying Imageau, and why strategic buyers do their R&D through M&A🥜 IN A NUTSHELL 🥜What does iFlux measure? The speed and direction of groundwater movement, and the mass of contamination moving through the subsoil with it.Why isn't a good groundwater model enough? Because from the day you release a model into the real world, the real world drifts away from it, and flux lets you calibrate with a vector instead of a single point.Who buys it? Industrial sites, drinking water utilities and cities, mostly through environmental consultants, of which iFlux wants to focus on two handfuls out of about 30 big ones worldwide.What is the 5 million for? Commercial rollouts through partner ecosystems in each country, more sensor development, and data-driven models that move from measuring to predicting.When should iFlux pay its own bills? Christian aims for a self-sustaining state in 2028.#️⃣ Mentioned Links #️⃣📌 iFlux, Christian's company: https://iflux.be/📌 Email Christian: [email protected] on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Why do water professionals still trust dowsing rods, and how did a magician expose them?So I traced dowsing from a coconut in an Indian field to the UK's water companies, an American engineering firm's podcast and the drillers of Australia. Then I looked at what the controlled tests say, from a magician's trial in Sydney to Kassel, and at what people really buy when they pay a dowser. It leads to my conversation with Christian Montag, CEO of iFlux, on measuring the water under our feet.The figures come from the sources named in the video: Hans-Dieter Betz, the US Air Force Institute of Technology, James Randi's 1980 test, Kassel 1990, the US Geological Survey, the New York Times and the United Nations.🌶️ KEY SPICES 🌶️🔮 Dowsing at work: in 2017, 10 of the 12 big UK water companies said their engineers used rods🎙️ Brown and Caldwell's Engineering Legends podcast hosted a dowser who "map dowses" from his office🍷 Mark Mondavi: 40 years of water witching, more than 100 wells, and a wine label called the Divining Rod🕳️ Water well drilling in Montgomery, Vermont: seven wells picked by hydrogeologists came up short, a dowser's eighth gave 300 gallons a minute (over 1,100 liters)🎩 James Randi offered $10,000 in Sydney in 1980: 111 tries, 15 hits, about 12% against 10% for pure luck🧠 Confirmation bias: the wells that worked get retold, the dry holes never do🧽 Groundwater is not an underground river: an aquifer is porous material soaked like a sponge💵 A geologist quoted $6,500 for a range and a probability, a dowser about $1,400 for a cross on the ground☢️ Montgomery's eighth well also held uranium: 76 parts per billion, nearly three times the state limit🥜 IN A NUTSHELL 🥜Does dowsing work? In field reports it seems to, but in controlled tests dowsers score barely better than chance.What are the tricks? Water is almost everywhere, the hands move the rods (the ideomotor effect), confirmation bias, and the wrong picture of what lies underground.Why do professionals still pay for it? Because the underground is invisible, and the dowser sells certainty where the scientist sells a probability.Why does it matter? Groundwater is about 99% of the liquid freshwater on Earth, and once polluted, it tends to stay polluted.#️⃣ Mentioned Links #️⃣📌 Interius Solutions: https://academy.interius.io/watertech-marketing-systemUse code ANTOINE15 for 15% off the Interius Academy, their WaterTech Marketing System(and yes, Björn only pays me if you sign up 😅)Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Do Water CEOs Get Fired for Their Results, or for Company Politics?When Saur pushed out Patrick Blethon in October 2026, I noticed he had brought former colleagues into his executive team... just like Sabrina Soussan before SUEZ let her go. So I traced 30 years of water CEOs, 659 tenures at 110 companies, to see what gets a CEO fired: results, gender, age, degrees, friends, or corporate politics.Every number comes from annual reports, filings, Global Water Intelligence, the Wayback Machine, press articles and LinkedIn, and the research archive is right here: https://dww.show/trust-me-bro/🌶️ KEY SPICES 🌶️🚪 Succession planning, insider or outsider: CEOs hired from outside the company were fired about twice as often as internal promotions, yet revenue grew a little faster and operating margins improved more under them (1.8 points up, against 0.2 down under insiders)🏛️ Corporate governance: state-controlled and private equity-owned water companies fire about twice as often as other owners, but 16 of their 22 firings come from four companies, Sabesp, Copasa, Acea and Saur🗳️ Company politics, literally: at state-controlled water companies, 8 of 14 firings came within a year of a new governor or mayor, like Sabesp's new CEO, named 26 days after São Paulo's new governor took office🔁 Change management: outsiders are appointed to trigger change and appoint 3.2 newcomers to the executive team in their first two years, against 2.1 for insiders, but those who appoint four or more are fired 42% of the time against 25%, while the 18 insiders who changed as much were never fired🎓 Gender, age, nationality, an MBA, a PhD or an elite school: none of them predicts a firing, and the degrees don't even buy a reliable starting-pay premium💸 The price of an outsider: more than a third of outside hires in US and UK filings got a payment to join, and three in four firings with known terms came with severance, a median disclosed payout of about $2 million🤝 Bringing your friends: outsiders hire six times more former colleagues than insiders, like Patrick Blethon bringing Xavier Savigny from Otis to Saur, but once the CEO's own background is accounted for, the friends add no statistically relevant firing risk📉 A bad last year: a loss, a profit warning, an operational failure or a scandal preceded 41% of firings, against 15% of other exits, as when Xylem cut its forecast in July 2013 and Gretchen McClain was out six weeks later🥜 IN A NUTSHELL 🥜What gets a water CEO fired, if not their results? A bad last year raises the odds for every CEO, but what sets outsiders apart is a power shift above them: under the board or chairman who appointed them, they were fired 3 times per 100 years in the job, against 7 under a new one, while insiders stayed at 1 either way.Do fired CEOs do a worse job? No. The shares of companies that fired their CEO beat their market by 3.4 points a year, against 3.3 when the CEO retired as planned.Should you follow your former boss onto their new executive team? Maybe, but know that when a CEO is fired, half the people they appointed leave the executive committee within two years, against 22% after a planned retirement.What does it mean for succession planning? Knowing water helps, but knowing the company helps more: outsiders who kept most of the team they inherited were fired only 10% of the time, and CEOs hired from rival water companies were fired in 18% of known departures, against 11% for internal promotions.#️⃣ Mentioned Links #️⃣]📌 My investigation on Saur and Patrick Blethon's departure: https://youtu.be/50ZvH3Xv3SEHosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Work with me: [email protected] a slot directly in my calendar: https://dww.show/meetWhy Was Patrick Blethon Fired From Saur, Five Days After Its Sale Was Called Off?On October 7, Saur announced that Patrick Blethon was leaving with immediate effect, after nearly seven years leading France's third-largest water company. In June, Menno Holterman and the Nijhuis executive team had already been pushed out, and on October 2, EQT had reportedly dropped its plan to reduce its stake. So I went through what Patrick and Menno built, how Saur paid for that growth, and what remains unfinished now that they are gone.🌶️ KEY SPICES 🌶️🗓️ The timeline, from the March 2026 Morgan Stanley mandate to explore selling Saur's municipal business, to Patrick Blethon fired five days after EQT reportedly backed off🏚️ Bouygues, PAI, a €2.3 billion leveraged buyout and the 2013 debt restructuring: why Saur came to EQT in 2018 wary of debt🧭 How Patrick Blethon used the loss of Nîmes to Veolia to make Saur less dependent on French municipal water🏭 Nijhuis, Aqua-Chem and Veolia's Mobile Water Services for about €190 million: the industrial leg that beat its €500 million target a year early💶 €75 million of capex against €63 million of EBITDA in 2023, net debt up from €1.24 to €1.4 billion, and a 2024 downgrade below investment grade📉 2025: industrial sales down 9% to €496 million, a cyber incident, and a negative Fitch outlook in May 2026, while the municipal business carried the group🥜 IN A NUTSHELL 🥜Why was Patrick Blethon fired from Saur? Saur says its strategy is unchanged, but my reading is that the test applied to that strategy changed: Patrick could point to a bigger group with a real industrial leg, while the shareholders asked when that growth would turn into cash, and into an exit.Did Patrick Blethon's strategy work? Largely, yes: industrial sales reached €545 million in 2024, a year ahead of the target, and that business cushioned Saur in 2023 when energy costs hit the French municipal side.Why did a growing Saur need cash? Because industrial contracts and mobile rental fleets are paid for upfront and earn back over time, and rising interest rates made that growth more expensive to finance.Who replaces Patrick Blethon at Saur? Didier Michaud-Daniel, previously chair of the supervisory committee, becomes executive chairman, and Jean-Paul Michel takes day-to-day responsibility as interim CEO.What is the point of being third? At home, Saur will always build behind Veolia and SUEZ, so the question is how it grows out of the giants' shadow without growing beyond what its owners are ready to finance.#️⃣ Mentioned Links #️⃣📌 My July article on Menno Holterman's departure: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/menno-holterman-story-antoine-walter-3q9re/📌 My investigation on SOURCE: https://youtu.be/NQDWrLDPBuM00:00 Patrick Blethon Fired as Saur CEO03:24 Saur's Leveraged Buyout and Debt Restructuring08:25 Patrick Blethon's Plan Beyond France13:34 Private Equity Exit: EQT Sells Half of Saur17:01 Cash Flow vs Profit: Why Saur Needed Blue Bonds25:19 Slowdown and Menno Holterman's Exit29:25 Exit Talks: How Patrick Blethon Got Fired34:58 Third Behind Veolia and SUEZ: What Now for Saur?Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

🙌 My WEFTEC 2026 coverage is sponsored by Interius Solutions: https://academy.interius.io/watertech-marketing-systemUse code ANTOINE15 for 15% off the Interius Academy, their WaterTech Marketing System (and yes, Björn only pays me if you sign up 😅)Will AI Replace Water and Wastewater Operators, or Become Their New Co-Worker?AI was everywhere I looked at WEFTEC 2026 in New Orleans, so I spent three days on the show floor asking 14 companies what artificial intelligence can really do for water utilities and wastewater treatment plants, from leak detection to water treatment automation. That gave me 17 interviews, one nerdy question I kept asking (what's under the hood?), and a pretty good idea of what the end of the water operator as we know it could look like.🌶️ KEY SPICES 🌶️🛠️ Cox Research has 4 engineers running a workflow that would take 20 to 30, because its AI turns a pump spec into schematics, a bill of materials and a quote in minutes🔬 Nyad turns a microscope photo from the wastewater lab into operating advice, with vision models that only ship once they score 90% or more against human microbiologists🛰️ ASTERRA's satellites tell water leak detection crews where to look, and TransientDetect has recorded over 250 million pressure waves to keep pipes from breaking in the first place🤖 Zed, AVA, Nelson and Eddy: the AI agents and assistants that Pani, Aquasight, MentorAPM and EAOS put next to the operator, and why MCP (Model Context Protocol) came up on a utility booth🔐 RAG, fine-tuning or a frontier model behind an API: where your data goes, and why Rockwell Automation's cybersecurity team wants your control network (SCADA included) to keep running when IT is under attack🎓 The 18-year-old who learned more in 4 days with an AI-built football playbook than in 4 months with the certification binder, and what it means for wastewater operator training💸 Vibe coding, one founder who replaced $2,500 a month of software in a weekend, and an AI water startup that expects to break even within its pre-seed round🥜 IN A NUTSHELL 🥜Will AI replace wastewater treatment plant operators? No. The teams I met build for the licensed operator, who stays in charge and gets help with the 2 a.m. questions, the work orders and the microscope.Is water AI just ChatGPT with a logo? The chat window is often a big model called through an API. The value sits behind it, in the utility's data, the specialist models and the tools an AI agent can use.Is it safe to connect AI to a water treatment plant? It depends on the access you give it: Pani stays read-only, Nyad starts with no plant connection at all, and Rockwell wants a control network that runs without IT.Can a water utility vibe code its own software? For a personal tool, yes. For something the whole organization depends on, somebody still has to maintain it once the summer intern is gone.Is AI in water another AI bubble? Partly, since not every use will stick. But after three full days of it, I'm betting AI is here to stay in the water industry.⏰ TIME CODES ⏰00:00 AI for Water at WEFTEC 202604:01 AI Engineering and Field Inspections07:38 AI Assistants for Water Utilities12:06 Wastewater AI: Microscopy and Modeling23:43 AI Leak Detection and Prevention32:36 AI Water Asset Management38:24 RAG, Fine-Tuning and Data Privacy46:16 Vibe Coding vs Utility Software54:00 AI Agents and MCP1:00:21 Water Utility Cybersecurity1:11:06 AI Copilots for Wastewater Operators1:14:41 AI Training for Water Operators1:19:34 AI Water Startups and Funding1:24:02 Future of AI in Water1:25:56 WEFTEC Booth Swag and BribesHosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.