Dean Amhaus describes the goal of The Water Council and the region’s water industry with a matter-of-fact tone that tempers a hint of hyperbole.
“We’re actually after world domination,” said Amhaus, president and CEO of the council, which launched in 2009.
In practical terms, that means building the region into the world leader in water research and innovation, the place where solutions to deadly water shortages and contamination are found and industries create new products and jobs.
Powerful partnerships
Building on the foundation established by existing industry leaders, including A.O. Smith Corp. and Badger Meter Inc., the region is advancing toward its goal through a focus on entrepreneurship and collaboration with universities in Milwaukee and beyond.
The UW-Whitewater Institute for Water Business became part of the council’s Global Water Center when it opened in 2013, in a seven-story building in Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point neighborhood.
In June 2014, the UW-Milwaukee expanded its School of Freshwater Sciences nearby, on the shore of the city’s inner harbor, and faculty and students conduct research on the Global Water Center’s top floor.
In 2015, Marquette University will fill the sixth floor with researchers and students working in its Water Quality Center.
“Water research is among the clusters of excellence Milwaukee is developing, and it is exciting to know that when there are water-related challenges around the world, leaders will turn to Marquette and its many partners in Milwaukee for solutions,” said Mike Lovell, the university president.
Bringing the schools into a building that houses two dozen water industry businesses and organizations will expose students to the possibilities of work in the field, even those from seemingly unrelated disciplines, according to Linda Reid, director of the UW-Whitewater Institute for Water Business.
“The water industry faces an aging workforce, which is forecast to worsen over the next 15 years,” she said. “As a result, federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, and educational institutions are working together to promote the water sector and ensure that there is a pool of qualified water professionals to meet current and future needs.”
Students will become the workers in existing companies and those developing in the Global Water Center’s accelerator program, The BREW (Business, Research, and Entrepreneurship in Wisconsin).
Fostering water’s future leaders
Every week, Elizabeth Thelen fields calls from companies and researchers around the world, people asking how to become part of The Council and its business accelerator.
“They need a little cocoon, where people understand their technology and what it’s like to be a startup,” said Thelen, director of entrepreneurship and talent at The Water Council.
The first five companies graduated from the year-long program in 2013, and another half-dozen joined them in 2014. Another six will be selected in 2015.
Participants receive low-cost office and development space, mentoring in business management, $50,000 in seed money and connections to experts.
“They have really good business leaders that chat with us on specific products,” said Sunit Mohindroo, a co-founder of WatrHub and 2014 BREW participant. “We feed off each other. It was a bulls-eye of what we wanted to be part of.”
WatrHub compiles and analyzes data on water quantity and quality. Mohindroo moved the business from Toronto to Milwaukee in 2014, one example of the magnet-like draw of the water center.
“The strongest economies in the world are knowledge or capacity-building economies,” Reid said. “It’s great that we have a strong manufacturing base here, but if there are a group of people in a cluster focusing intellectually on the same issue and pushing the envelope on ideas, it creates an environment where companies are willing to grow and expand, maybe take a little more risk on new ideas.”
Some of those new ideas include the well monitoring system that Wellntell will put on the market in 2015, hydro-power automation developed by Cadens LLC and portable water storage and treatment containers developed by Stonehouse Water Technologies.
The research being done will also will be important to established businesses, according to Daniel Zomiter, an engineering professor and director of Marquette’s Water Quality Center.
“We certainly want to help the entrepreneurs and work with them,” Zomiter said. “But you work with a company like A.O. Smith that has an organized research team, and there’s a lot that you can do with them.”
With the 98,000-square-foot Global Water Center nearly full, the water hub will start construction in 2015 on the first building in the Reed Street Yards, a technology park along the South Menomonee Canal. The buildings in the park will house water-related businesses, some that may be fermenting now in The BREW.
It may not represent world domination, but it significantly advances that goal.
