“The large metallic white box sits in a Southern California parking lot, looking unremarkable until water starts flowing from a hose attached to it. Peer inside, though, and it’s nearly empty but for some wires, tubes and a container of light-colored material.

The water isn’t being conjured out of thin air by magic but by MOFs— metallic organic frameworks. MOFs are nanocrystalline structures engineered at an atomic level to attract specific molecules. In this case that’s H2O and the machine made by startup Atoco is silently harvesting molecules from the surrounding air and storing them in the material’s porous cavities that serve as microscopic water tanks.

Atoco founder Omar Yaghi shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry for pioneering MOFs and on an April morning he gave Bloomberg News an exclusive demonstration of the commercial prototype of its atmospheric water harvester in the lot outside the company’s Orange County laboratory…

Set to go into production later this year, the shipping container-sized machine will produce up to 4,000 liters (1,057 gallons) of water daily and can be installed at data centers, hospitals and other critical infrastructure. An off-the-grid model that operates on ambient sunlight and produces less water can be deployed to communities where water must now be trucked in.”

From Bloomberg.

“On Thursday, officials from Cameron and Hidalgo counties together with representatives of US Desalination LLC and IDE Technologies hailed a partnership between the latter two companies that will see the construction of a $1 billion desalination plant on South Padre Island.

The companies formed RGV-Desal LLC, described in a news release as a joint venture to design, develop and finance the plant with private funds.

The plant is planned to produce around 50 million gallons per day using seawater from the Gulf of Mexico, and will be designed to serve the entire Rio Grande Valley.”

From myRGV.

“Veolia (Paris:VIE) is working with Amazon to reduce data center water use and advance water reuse in Amazon’s data center operations in Mississippi, contributing to local water resilience while supporting Amazon’s goal to be water positive across its direct data center operations by 2030.

The first facility is expected to be operational in 2027, making it the first Amazon data center in Mississippi to use reclaimed water for cooling. Veolia, world leader in water technologies, will deploy autonomous, innovative containerized treatment systems that will transform effluent from nearby wastewater treatment plants and other available sources into cooling water that meets the quality standards required for industrial cooling processes.

The project is expected to reuse more than 83 million gallons of potable water per year once fully operational, equivalent to the annual water use of approximately 760 U.S. homes — estimated to be equivalent to the volume of water the data center would otherwise draw from local groundwater and potable water supplies.”

From Business Wire.

“At least six small cities and towns in the Coastal Bend region of Texas issued disaster declarations in the last two weeks, begging not to be forgotten amid a spiraling water crisis…

Alice, however, expects to fare better than other communities. Last July it cut ribbons on a groundwater desalination plant, a decade in the making, owned and operated by an investor-backed water treatment company called Seven Seas.

‘They have a profit margin,’ said Alice City Manager Michael Esparza. ‘We are paying a private company to do something for us. It’s no different than we do with a lot of things. Although, this one is pretty big because it’s our water.’

Furthermore, he said, little Alice lacks the technical expertise to maintain and operate such an advanced facility.”

From The Texas Tribune.