Spotlight October 2022: New Treatment Tech Harvests Agricultural Water by ACWA Staff Oct 14, 2022 BWT packs its treatment technology into mobile water harvesting units that can move between different types of agricultural processing plants, including sugar mills, as well as fruit and vegetable concentrators. Photos courtesy of Botanical Water Technologies New water treatment technology could recover drinking water during the industrial process that turns tomatoes into paste and other products. Recently tested at Ingomar Packing Company in Los Banos, the technology could produce potable water by the millions of gallons for distribution to disadvantaged communities within the Central California Irrigation District (CCID), fulfilling a major priority for the ACWA-member agency. The technology belongs to the Australian-based company Botanical Water Technologies, or BWT, which packs it into mobile, remotely operated plant-water harvester units about the size of a shipping container. BWT recently established its first U.S. partnership with Ingomar, the second largest tomato processer in the country, where much of the tomatoes processed originate from growers served by CCID. As one of the largest irrigation districts in the Central Valley, CCID serves over 1,600 growers who farm across more than 143,000 acres of prime farmland. Like many agricultural areas, CCID’s territory includes disadvantaged communities where reliable access to safe drinking water can be a challenge, one exacerbated by the drought as many wells dry up. It’s there that CCID General Manager Jarrett Martin sees one of the biggest potential benefits from BWT-treated water. “We can help the disadvantaged communities, we can help agriculture and we can help industry. It’s a situation where everyone wins,” Martin said. BWT’s Ingomar project plans to provide up to 100 million gallons of potable water a year — a little more than 306 acre-feet — by 2025 for drinking water, groundwater replenishment and community projects, according to a news release from the company. The water originates as evaporative condensate during tomato processing. Partially relying on reverse osmosis, BWT’s technology extracts a percentage of that condensate and treats it to potable quality. Future partnerships with community organizations such as Self-Help Enterprises in the Central Valley could see some of that water delivered to disadvantaged communities in the form of totes, or tanker-truck quantities that could replenish storage tanks in areas where wells have run dry. For BWT, the Ingomar project is one part of a much larger expansion plan that could include 200 plant harvester units in the U.S., Mexico and India, located in areas with water supply vulnerabilities. The units can also produce potable water from sugar mills and fruit and vegetable concentrators. The company earns revenue through the trade of Water Impact Credits on a Botanical Water Exchange, similar to the system used with carbon credits. Corporations use the credits to offset water use by receiving proof of compliance with environmental, social and governance standards, increasingly an issue with investors and government regulators. “Really, what we’re trying to do is match that water with needs within the aquifer,” said Jeff Simonetti, Strategic Advisory and Water Resources Consultant for BWT. Back at CCID, there are plenty of needs to match. In addition to helping provide more safe water to disadvantaged communities, uses for BWT-produced water could help in recharging groundwater in the area, where CCID manages the Groundwater Sustainability Agency for the Exchange Contractors Water Authority. Or, it could also be used to grow and process more tomatoes. “That’s where it completes the circle,” Martin said. “We grow processing tomatoes with water from CCID, capture the water back from the tomato and put it to beneficial use for our disadvantaged communities.”
