Money pours in to prevent groundwater pollution
Clear Water Compliance Services has raised $25 million from hedge fund Plainview Asset Management, according to VentureWire. It's the latest deal in the growing market for water technology.
The company specializes in equipment that can take impurities out of water spilling out of construction sites, ports and other places. This dirty water can infect municipal water supplies. Meeting regulations isn't always cheap either, so services like this can help builders avoid cleanup costs.
As an added bonus, the company's Web site sports a video of Bill Nye the Science Guy holding some crabs and lecturing on water.
Water has been the undercurrent of the clean technology market. General Electric and Siemens began to snap up water companies in the early part of the decade. Israel has begun to incubate a bunch of start-ups working on wastewater treatment to technology for purifying drinking water.
Here in the States, there are companies like HaloSource (drinking water purification), NanoH2O (desalination membrane--it's a spin-off out of UCLA) and EcoSphere (high-powered hose that cuts down groundwater pollution). Oh, and Novazone (purifying water with ozone).
Half the hospital beds in the world are filled with people with water-borne diseases. Australia is suffering severe droughts. Jeff Fulgham, chief marketing officer for water tech at General Electric, is one of the scariest guys you can interview in clean tech these days. And U.S. and European regulators are calling for tighter purity restrictions. So expect to hear more.
