Water is a basic necessity. Everyone needs a steady supply of clean water to survive. However, clean and safe water isn’t accessible in many places. Too much phosphorus and ammonia can lead to a body of water being unfit for human and animal consumption. Kentucky-based startup Water Warriors is here to solve the problem of overflow of nutrients in water supplies with their eco-friendly product.
Working to make the world’s water supply cleaner and safer, Water Warriors’ signature product, the patented Poseidon Pellets, remove phosphorus and ammonia on contact without using any harsh chemicals.
“It’s all about nutrient pollution,” said John Gradek, CEO of Water Warriors, explaining that climate change and warmer temperatures on Earth have contributed to more harmful algae blooms growing in bodies of water. These algae blooms are toxic, sucking all the oxygen out of the water they’re occupying and disrupting the ecosystem. This leads to “dead zones,” which, Gradek said, “smell horrible, you can’t swim in them, you can’t use the drinking water anymore, and it poisons the oceans.”
Nutrient contamination kills wildlife and chokes the ocean of oxygen.
Water Warriors can capture the excess nutrients before they reach our waterways.
“It’s all about nutrient pollution. These algae blooms smell horrible, you can’t swim in them, you can’t use the drinking water anymore, and it poisons the oceans.”
Water Warriors’ Poseidon Pellets are natural, affordable, and can remove harmful levels of nutrients to keep the algae blooms from forming. Once they have cleaned up a body of water, the pellets can then be reused as a slow-release nutrient rich soil amendment.
A number of industries benefit from Water Warriors’ Poseidon Pellets. The pellets are currently being used in agricultural and livestock runoff, stormwater management, waterways restoration, sustainable aquaculture, and wastewater treatment industries.
“When (the pellets are) in water, they stay as long as we need them to,” Gradek said. Water Warriors offers the small pellets for sale in containers, in a large supersack, or contained in a “sockboom,” a long porous sock-like tube.
“Using ‘sockbooms’ makes it really retrievable,” Gradek explained. “Most people want to treat a lake that's got algae blooms already in it. So using our pellets, we can treat the creeks and tributaries and everything leading into the lake.
“If there's an algae bloom already, our product will still take the nutrients out of the water. But you're kind of in trouble already, you know? There are plenty of chemicals out there that will treat an existing bloom in a pond. And they're toxic and hazardous. Some of them sink (the bloom) to the bottom. Ours is all natural, so that’s another advantage we have.”
Water Warriors Poseidon Pellets
Their value has been seen worldwide as Water Warriors has reached some exciting milestones in this past year. The team secured a global distribution agreement through Australian-based Phoslock Environmental Technologies, aiding with the sale of their products in the U.S., Europe, Canada, South America, Australia, and New Zealand.
With approximately 30 pilots and tests under their belt in a number of different climates and settings, Water Warriors has tested their product in multiple water treatment categories from aquaculture to industrial storm water, and everything in between. They are currently undergoing a pilot test in wastewater treatment at a Coca-Cola facility in the U.S. and are possibly expanding to facilities in international markets. They also have a pilot study happening through The Water Council, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit dedicated to solving critical water challenges through innovation, working with wastewater and agricultural runoff treatment. And they are working with the South Florida Water Management District on a grant that would allow truckloads of their pellets to be placed in the cement canals from Lake Okeechobee out through Fort Lauderdale to the Atlantic Ocean, preventing ocean pollution and keeping the area clean for tourism and local wildlife.
Through all of the deployments of their Poseidon Pellets, the small Water Warriors team of Gradek and Chief Revenue Officer Steve Chamberland is seeing the need for their technology throughout the world.
“There's so much potential in a lot of places that it's almost hard for us to focus sometimes,” Gradek said. “And that's one reason why the distribution agreement (with Phoslock Environmental Technologies) is such a big deal for us. There's two of us, and now we've just exponentially multiplied that and gotten a worldwide reach.”
As their pellets make the plunge into more places around the world, Water Warriors aims to continue scaling their business to make water safer and cleaner for all of us.
Learn more about Water Warriors at waterwarriorsinc.com
By: Makenzie Purdom
Launch Blue nurtures promising startup founders and university innovators through intensive accelerator and incubator programs. Its funding partners are the University of Kentucky: Office of Technology Commercialization, KY Innovation, the U.S. Economic Development Administration, and the National Science Foundation.