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Welcome to The Executive Exchange, a premier podcast series for on-the-go senior executives. Each episode features short, impactful podcasts where industry leaders share key insights and experiences from the water industry.
[00:00:00] Piers Clark: Welcome to the Exec Exchange 15 minute podcast in which a leader from the water sector shares a story to inspire, inform, and educate other water sector leaders from around the globe.
[00:00:11] Piers Clark: My name is Piers Clark and my guest today is Hans Goossens, the Chief Executive at De Watergroep. And we're gonna be talking about direct potable reuse and the scheme that's just been installed in Hofstade.
[00:00:24] Piers Clark: Hans, wonderful to have you with us today.
[00:00:26] Hans Goossens: You're welcome.
[00:00:27] Piers Clark: Now, we always like to start by learning a little bit about our podcaster, so can you give me your potted background? How did you get into the role at De Watergroep?
[00:00:37] Hans Goossens: I'm now for almost 10 years heading De Watergroep, Flanders' largest public water company. Before doing so, I was working almost 25 years with Yara International, a Norwegian, multinational and leading nitrogen fertilizer supplier of the world.
[00:00:55] Hans Goossens: The link between fertilizers and water sector is quite obvious. If there is no water, there is no agriculture, and there is no fertilizer. So I was triggered by the global challenge on water scarcity and water security, which motivated me to go from a multinational into a local public company.
[00:01:16] Hans Goossens: The challenges that the public companies these days have, specifically in the water sector, are actually at least of the same scale as the challenges of a large multinational. It's about transformation. It's about adapting. It's about implementing change.
[00:01:32] Piers Clark: Brilliant. Now let's talk about De Watergroep. Where are you? How many people do you serve? What sort of services do you provide?
[00:01:40] Hans Goossens: De Water Group is an integrated water company which is serving a bit more than 50% of Flanders, that means about 3.6 million people. And we are producing drinking water, potable water, from different sources all over the country and distributing it to our customers, also spread over the country.
[00:01:58] Piers Clark: Okay, and you don't do wastewater services?
[00:02:02] Hans Goossens: We do wastewater collection services not to the full extent to all drinking water customers. Wastewater purification in Flanders is with Aquafin, a specific company which has been funded for purifying the wastewater in Flanders.
[00:02:18] Piers Clark: Excellent. Thank you for clarifying that.
[00:02:20] Piers Clark: What we're gonna talk about today is the work you've been doing on direct potable reuse. So, walk me through the journey of when did you start thinking about doing direct potable reuse, and what were the concerns that were being expressed, and how did you address those?
[00:02:34] Hans Goossens: Well, actually, this is a project which came up a couple of years ago whereby we identified the need for looking into different sources than the traditional groundwater and surface water sources for making potable water, just because there is a scarcity of these sources.
The effluent of a wastewater treatment plant is an almost obvious one that is more and more recognized also on a global scale. But Flanders launched its Blue Deal a couple of years ago where it motivated companies both public and private, to look into possibilities for using this effluent of the wastewater treatment plants as a new source.
[00:03:16] Hans Goossens: Actually, it was our sister company Farys who approached us within the cooperation we have with them called Waterunie on working together on taking the effluent from the wastewater plant in Aalst, a region which is served by Farys.
[00:03:32] Hans Goossens: Combining our knowledge and competence together, looking into possibilities for aquifer storage and recovery so that we can use the potable water produced from effluent directly. But when the need is not there, for instance in wintertime, we could store it in the underground in the aquifer so that then we could, in the summer season typically, where there is a higher need for water, we can then pump it up again.
[00:03:59] Hans Goossens: And the project has been successful. We have an installed capacity of thousand cubic meter per day, and we are now doubling it to two thousand cubic meter per day.
[00:04:08] Piers Clark: Actually, before we get to the size and scale, let's just take a minute to talk about Farys. You mentioned them as your sister company.
[00:04:15] Piers Clark: So just tell me a little bit about Farys.
[00:04:17] Hans Goossens: When I say a sister company, it's not that we have the same mother. I think we are brothers and sisters to the extent that we are both public water companies , and our regions where we serve are interconnected through each other.
[00:04:30] Hans Goossens: We are present from Western Flanders, Eastern Flanders, Flemish Brabant to Limburg. And Farys is active on Brussels, Aalst, Ghent, Bruges, Ostend as well as the southern part of Ghent.
[00:04:44] Hans Goossens: The reason why these companies are actually having regions which are just flowing through each other is because of the infrastructure which was built decades, if not a century ago, and which was coming together as both the distribution networks expanded.
[00:05:00] Piers Clark: So the companies are separate because of their historic infrastructure rather than because of the watersheds and the water catchment areas. It's an interesting split of the company assets, which is why they are your sister company whilst you don't have, as you say a common mother. You share very similar geographies, very similar topographies, very similar operational challenges.
[00:05:20] Hans Goossens: And actually, we have decided that Waterunie today is a project-based cooperation where the project in Hofstade is one of the examples. We are in a process of merging the two companies into one company by 2032 when the intermunicipal cooperation agreement for the municipalities within Farys is coming to an end.
[00:05:42] Piers Clark: Is that a scoop? Have I just had a scoop here that De Watergroep and Farys are going to combine, or is that already in the public domain? I hadn't heard that news.
[00:05:49] Hans Goossens: That has been in the public domain, but this is a complex trajectory because we are merging two companies with a completely different nature.
[00:05:57] Hans Goossens: We're doing the same thing, but we have a different history and a different governance structure. Even different legislation that we have to adhere to. But we are progressing and a project like this one is, of course, increasing the belief and the understanding that this is the right and only thing to do.
[00:06:16] Piers Clark: Brilliant, and it helps the team see the reality of what we could do together.
[00:06:20] Piers Clark: Let's come back to Hofstade. You mentioned that it's a 1,000 meters cube a day currently with the plans to expand to 2,000 meters cube a day.
[00:06:30] Piers Clark: Just walk me through where are we at? How long has the plant been running, and what sort of issues have you seen in terms of performance?
[00:06:38] Hans Goossens: The plant has been running since mid-2025. The performance has been going well, as predicted, without too many troubles, I would say.
[00:06:49] Hans Goossens: The aquifer storage and recovery part is more complex, and there we see that it's not so evident that the quality of the water remains over a period of months. So, there we are still doing different experiments on understanding how could we stabilize the quality of the produced water stored in the aquifer in a better way.
[00:07:10] Hans Goossens: The multi-barrier principle works very well on the site. It's typical nanofiltration, reverse osmosis, an activated carbon with the final disinfection and chlorination.
[00:07:22] Piers Clark: And tell me about the costs. How much more expensive is this as a mode of treatment when compared to your conventional water treatment?
[00:07:31] Piers Clark: I get that, of course, the reason you're doing this is because you don't have other sources of water , so it's not like you can make a simple choice for one or the other.
[00:07:38] Piers Clark: But what's the premium that's coming with doing direct potable reuse?
[00:07:43] Hans Goossens: If you look into the different sources we have, groundwater is far and foremost the cheapest source, right? It requires less of purification. We see that our surface water are getting more and more expensive in the treatments.
[00:07:56] Hans Goossens: I think we know that the cheapest drinking water source is hardly costing 20 cents. But the more complex surface water treatment , depending on the investment period and the depreciation, you're getting to 80 cent and even 90 cent. And I think a plant like Hofstade is a bit above that, but not dramatically.
[00:08:14] Piers Clark: That's still cheaper than desalination?
[00:08:16] Hans Goossens: Yes. Of course, desalination plants often are of a larger scale, but the energy cost with desalination is huge, yeah?
[00:08:24] Piers Clark: Now, you said that the plan was water would go into public supply during the summer months.
[00:08:28] Piers Clark: Did water go into the public supply last summer? And how did the public respond?
[00:08:32] Hans Goossens: Yes. Actually, it's also fair to say that it's injected into a large transportation line, so that the public only gets a mix of drinking water produced from wastewater effluent or produced from surface water.
[00:08:46] Hans Goossens: The public responds quite well on that.
[00:08:49] Piers Clark: And the reason I ask that question is I'm sure many people listening to this will be thinking, "We've got to start thinking about these alternative water sources, the wastewater, how can we put that back into supply?"
[00:08:58] Piers Clark: But there'll be a concern around taking your customers on that journey and ensuring that they still believe that they are getting robust, reliable, and wholesome water.
[00:09:10] Piers Clark: Did you have to do a big campaign to keep people informed?
[00:09:14] Hans Goossens: In general, I would say we keep on communicating both to the broad public as well as to the sector specialists, in quite a transparent way, what we do and that we do see wastewater treatment effluent as a new source of drinking water.
[00:09:31] Hans Goossens: Whereby we also explain actually that the effluent of a wastewater treatment plant today, if it is not used for drinking water purposes, it is going to the surface waters where a few kilometers downstream, drinking water is being taken out again.
[00:09:47] Hans Goossens: Ours was a bit of a living lab. Its not so much about testing technology, but it's more about demonstrating to the broader public that such a step of taking this as a new source is not done overnight.
It is tested and it is proven.
[00:10:02] Piers Clark: Excellent. Let's talk about monitoring cause I'm sure people want to know how are you doing the monitoring, in particular for things like e. coli, where typically you might take a sample and it goes off to a lab, and you get a result back 48 hours later, by which time it might be too late if water's going to supply .
[00:10:18] Piers Clark: I understand you've been doing some very innovative things with continuous online monitoring. Can you talk a bit about that?
[00:10:25] Hans Goossens: To be fair with you, I'm not a specialist in that. I know that people from Farys and CAPTURE have been indeed very active on developing, fine-tuning this online flow cytometry, if I remember well.
[00:10:37] Hans Goossens: It has shown that it is reliable, and a good way of, let's say, having an online guard, which is not taking away, of course, in the start-up period, that you still need to be vigilant.
We feel very comfortable that we have both online as well with a right sampling frequency
[00:10:56] Piers Clark: Yeah, I'm so glad you mentioned that flow cytometry because the reason I led you there was we recently did a podcast with the Chief Inspector at the Drinking Water Inspectorate in the UK, and a similar issue came up around reuse and how would you do the monitoring, and he made reference to flow cytometry, and I happen to know that Farys and De Watergroep have been doing work with a Swiss company called bNovate. They have a technology called BactoSense, which does continuous monitoring of E. coli giving the operator a constant reassurance as to the water quality.
[00:11:33] Hans Goossens: All credit goes to Farys. They have been pioneering this continuous online monitoring technology.
[00:11:38] Hans Goossens: The final barrier is still chlorination, which is in Flanders still broadly used, that gives a further guarantee against microbial infection.
[00:11:49] Piers Clark: Excellent. Hans, it's wonderful to hear about this project. And it's brilliant that you're so open to sharing.
I'd like to finish by asking our standard question, which is to say, if you were to go back 40 years, what advice would you give your younger self?
[00:12:05] Piers Clark: With all that you know now, would you be saying, "Stay in agricultural fertilizers, Hans. stay in the fertilizer business"?
[00:12:11] Hans Goossens: No, no, no. Definitely not! I would say stay curious and open-minded from young to old.
[00:12:21] Piers Clark: You have been listening to the Exec Exchange with me, Piers Clark. And my guest today has been Hans Goossens, the Chief Executive at De Watergroep. And we have been talking about direct potable reuse.
Thank you to our sponsors, and until next time, keep asking questions, keep sharing, and keep safe.