A small Central Texas town has just secured a massive deal with a tech leader to protect its future water supply. The City of Bastrop has finalized a $5 million contract with VVater, a water technology company, to deliver next-generation, chemical-free water treatment infrastructure.
This comes as the city continues to boom in population and economic growth, driving increased demand for water even as scarcity challenges persist across the Lone Star State. Bastrop now joins a rapidly growing list of American cities, utilities and major operators choosing VVater to address mounting pressure on water capacity, quality and long-term resilience, according to a news release.
“From Corpus Christi staring down a Day Zero scenario to data center developers fighting over water allocations that don’t yet exist, the U.S. water crisis has stopped being a future problem,” said Kevin Gast, Chairman & CEO of VVater. “We’re seeing unprecedented demand from cities, utilities, real estate developers, and industrial operators across the country who realize legacy treatment isn’t built for what’s coming. Bastrop is part of that wave, and the communities moving early are the ones that will thrive over the next decade. The rest will be playing catch-up.”
Bastrop, a city located about 33 miles east of Austin, has become a hub for business over the past decade, attracting big tech companies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the Boring Company, and X. That growth has placed significant new demand on Bastrop’s local water infrastructure, prompting city leaders to pursue modern methods ahead of other small cities.
“As a city, we have a responsibility to make sure our water infrastructure is ready for the growth that’s coming,” said Mayor Ishmael Harris. “It’s not just about what we’ve already built. I’ve spent over twenty years working in water and wastewater in Central Texas, and what cities are looking at today is very different from the way we’ve built systems in the past. Working with VVater gives us an opportunity to explore new technology and be at the forefront of efforts aimed at improving how we efficiently treat and reuse water for our community.”
The deployment of VVater will expand Bastrop’s treatment capacity and provide the city with the operational flexibility to support its long-term water strategy cost-effectively. At its core, VVater uses a Farady Reactor, which is a proprietary, chemical-free and electricity-based water treatment platform that delivers safer, cleaner and more energy-efficient water treatment than conventional systems.
This award-winning technology has enabled VVater to treat 4.3 billion gallons of water across global industrial, municipal and commercial sectors.
“We looked hard at every option available to us,” said Bastrop City Manager Sylvia Carrillo-Trevino in a release. “VVater’s technology gives Bastrop a level of water quality, operational efficiency, and long-term flexibility that conventional treatment systems simply cannot match. This is about serving our residents well today while building the foundation for whatever the next decade brings.”
“As cities across the country contend with population growth, tightening regulations, and mounting pressure on traditional water supply, Bastrop’s approach reflects what is rapidly becoming the standard for forward-looking communities: deploying advanced, proven treatment infrastructure built to perform under whatever the next decade demands,” VVater concluded in a release.