interview not enough to effectively cope with local water stress. We simply must take notice of how drought is affect-ing agriculture on which millions depend, and how it threatens supply for the local people and tourism. Is infrastructure advancing quickly enough? Obviously not. Along with more infrastructure, a significant shift in focus is also needed. It is often planned as an emergency solution to deal with a problem that already exists, but in the face of increasing water stress and a growing world population, we need strategic plans with estimates 5, 10, and 20 years into the future and the associated budget items. We are witnessing more public-private partnerships, as well as private initiatives aiming to move beyond the constraints of public investment, such as farmers joining forces to seek out financing and supply solutions, mostly through reclaimed water or desalination plants. How does the company contribute from that different approach? With know-how, technology, and capacity; three factors that feed off each other. We have decades of experience in treating very complex waters with quite a variety of pollutants, in environments as diverse as a lake full of algae and waste and the Thames Estuary. We desalinate in the Mediterranean with a salinity level of 36 milligrams/liter and in the Persian Gulf with 55 milligrams/liter of dissolved solids. We are pioneers in membranes, not only in desalination but in purification as well. We have entirely removed petroleum products (which can also be reused), hospital waste, and what seemed impossible, microplastics, with exclu-sive treatments in each case. This capacity allows us to take on any proj-ect and deliver the infrastructure in record time with specific processes “NONE OF OUR PLANTS HAS EVER HAD A BREAKDOWN OR SERIOUS TREATMENT LIABILITY. NOT ALL COMPANIES CAN SAY THE SAME” 1. The Water Engineering team is made up of 200 professionals specialized in every area of infrastructure and management. “This diversity makes it practically an applied engineering university keeping all its R&D in-house and no outsourcing of any service, which attracts and retains talent. It is a model to follow in the sector,” says Lorena Cagigas. 2. It is also “the basis for an infrastructure model ahead of its time.” Although it is being developed today, it is planned decades ahead, based on the economic, demographic and climate needs of a future of accelerated change. 3. All of its technological muscle is focused equally on quality (tested under the most extreme water conditions in rivers, lakes and seas), scaling pro-duction and efficiency, developing its own Building Information Modeling (BIM) models, digital twins of facilities, artificial intelligence to improve the efficiency of consumption and processes, integration with photovoltaic plants, cybersecurity standards to safeguard the plants’ data, continuous-ly improving versions of water filtering and reclaiming and reverse osmo-sis systems, among others, and specific processes for growing needs like agricultural irrigation and urban uses. 4. According to the director, “We currently foresee a circular management and business model that will become ever more competitive in terms of costs and returns.” It includes infrastructure that is entirely self-sufficient in energy use thanks to the generation of gas, that reutilizes mud to manu-facture high-quality agricultural fertilizers, and that is starting to transform brine (the by-product of desalination) into an extra source of income by recovering strategic metals and materials from it for their use in industry.