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Make It Clear: Why You Can't Just Flush and Forget
Make It Clear: Why You Can't Just Flush and Forget
A Third-Party Solution to Infrastructure Obstacles: An Interview with Alex Gamota
Sometimes, old solutions can be used in new ways to solve problems. Population growth and expanding infrastructure can be big problems for many small communities. In this episode, we talk with Alex Gamota, cofounder and CEO of 3PO Networks, a company that plays a pivotal role in bringing sewer and fiber optics to small communities that face infrastructure challenges. He shares how 3PO Networks has helped communities find solutions by breaking through obstacles to growth that couldn’t be handled affordably through conventional means.
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00:08
Hello and welcome to Make It Clear, a conversational podcast about all things related to water and wastewater. I'm your host, Angela Bounds, and I'm joined by my co-host, Shawn Rapp. In each episode, we'll tackle a relevant topic with facts and expert opinions and make things clear.
Angela: Hello and thanks for joining us again. Today we have another WEFTEC follow-up with Alex Gamota from 3PO. Hi Alex.
Alex: Hello Angela. Good morning.
00:38
Angela: Yeah, thanks for joining us again. And of course, Shawn is here with us to keep us in line and…
Shawn: It's the most important part of my job, I think.
Angela: It's at least the funnest part of your job.
Shawn: Yes, it is.
Angela: The most fun part of your job. You get to spend half an hour with us.
Shawn: That is true.
Angela: What could be better?
Shawn”: I know, right?
Angela: So as a lot of you probably heard, hopefully you heard and listened, we did an interview with Alex while we were at WEFTEC and
01:07
As we've done with a lot of the people that we interviewed at WEFTEC, we've invited them back to have a longer form discussion about the industry, about what they're doing, kind of like about what's happening, just really get people a more open forum. WEFTEC was, as always, loud, a bit chaotic, lots and lots going on. So we wanted to sit down in a smaller venue and just really have a discussion. So we appreciate you coming back and talking to us.
01:37
So with that, why don't you give us a little bit more insight into the business. So into 3PO, what you guys are doing, what you're doing for communities, etc.
Alex: Okay, great. Well, good to see you again, Angela and hello, Shawn. And now I understand the power structure here. I'll be sure to find my best behavior.
Shawn: I control the knobs. So, yeah.
Alex: So, so 3PO networks, 3PO stands for third party owner networks. We finance, own and operate critical infrastructure,
02:06
modern sewer and broadband to the home. And our main focus right now is helping communities unlock new housing projects where critical infrastructure, and really when we say that, what's holding up the housing from happening? It's sewer, it's lack of wastewater treatment capacity. And we've partnered with Orenco with a great technology that...
02:35
lowers the costs of collection systems and treatment. We combine it with fiber to the home, as I said. We also will contribute capital to 30% of the build. We'll then own and operate both networks, the collection system, the treatment, if treatment's needed, as well as fiber to the home. The response has been really tremendous because you know,
03:04
regardless of which political party you're in, housing is a crisis. And it's all over the country.
Angela: I don't know that, I mean, we've seen it over and over and over again, where studies will be done on wastewater and what's needed. So they'll do a feasibility study and the cost will come back and be absolutely prohibitive. And so they just paid 20
03:32
thousand dollars or whatever for this study, and then they can't fund it because of the cost of the infrastructure. And they can't get funding, potentially. So it's not only cost prohibitive, but they can't get funding. And then they'll do another feasibility study in five years, and it'll say the same thing. So you guys are kind of coming in and trying to help communities overcome those hurdles so that they can actually sewer their communities.
04:02
Alex: That's correct. And I would like to just kind of differentiate new housing and then existing housing that's on, let's say that are on septic systems and maybe there's a consent decree or some sort of mandate that they need to move from a septic system to a sewer system.
Angela: Right.
Alex: Where we think we can be the most effective, the quickest are on those new housing projects where the developer was going to put in a gravity system.
04:32
And there, what we're able to say to the developer is really twofold. One is, they were gonna do the gravity approach, but the local community doesn't have enough capacity in their wastewater treatment facility. So there, we're able to say, well, look, developer, have you thought about this alternative approach?
Angela: Right, right.
Alex: The pressurized liquid-only sewer. So it's 30 to 50% less that's actually gonna go to the treatment plant.
05:03
Is there enough treatment to handle that? And what we're finding is that often the case, I mean, it's obviously case by case, that is the case. That then allows the city to green light that project. Now, the follow-up to the developer who was already willing to pay for the gravity system, look, this is cheaper, maybe 50% cheaper. There's no lift stations, there's less engineering, there's less construction…
05:32
all the sort of the downstream benefits. While you're doing this, we're also solving for broadband enabled homes day one, and we're able to contribute capital to your build. Those were things they weren't expecting. They were first focused on how can I get my project to get that sewer permit.
Angela: Right. And you come along and you're like, hey, I'll solve multiple problems.
Alex: Exactly.
06:01
Angela: or multiple issues. I'll tic off three boxes for you.
Alex: Exactly. And without getting into specific places, because, you know, in some cases, we have contracts, others, you know, we're still working through it. The leadership in the community, whether it's the mayor or the town manager, they're thrilled because they know they need workforce housing. And they're just struggling because if they just did things the traditional way,
06:31
it would be three years or four years, five years from now when they'd be able to get a bond to increase the capacity in their wastewater treatment facility. They're looking for a solution and it's maybe a little disruptive, a little, but the crisis causes people to think about, hey, what are the solutions that are out there that can resolve the housing crisis? And so if it's looked at that lens, there's a lot of thinking
07:00
that maybe we've done this this way forever, which is great and understand it, but there's other tools in that toolkit.
Angela: Right, there are other ways to look at this.
Alex: And what we bring to it is 30 years worth of experience with similar other utilities or other sort of common infrastructure where you're able to do joint trench builds or have
07:28
multiple tenants on a cell phone tower or share fiber capacity. Nothing we're doing is necessarily new. The Orenco technology has been around 40, 50 years. Fiber optic is similar, been around 40, 50 years. There's been third party owner operators. We're just bringing it to a new domain, which is, which is sewer.
Angela: Right.
Alex: And I think that's exciting.
Angela: That's one thing people may not know about you guys is that
07:58
you know, it may appear like a startup to a lot of people who look you guys up because this latest venture is relatively new, but you guys come with a breadth of knowledge in regards to utilities, and you've been working in this space, not necessarily wastewater and broadband, but you've been working in the utility space helping communities, like you said, for 30 years.
Alex: Well, and what's interesting about it is that
08:28
I actually started my career with water and wastewater, about eight years of it. And back in the late 90s, and I'm dating myself, there was this exciting thing called the cell phone. Do you remember the car phone?
Shawn: Oh yeah, I had one.
Angela: Shawn and I do actually remember the 90s.
Alex: And associated with is that, hey, in order for this thing to work, you needed to put in an antenna somewhere. And that antenna,
08:57
needed to be connected to a box, the box needed power and fiber, and more importantly, it could never leave.
Shawn: It was tied to the car.
Alex: Out of that was created a whole new industry called the communication tower business. I pivoted from water, wastewater, to doing that, and back then, no one knew what a...
09:25
If you knew what a cell phone tower was, the idea that there were businesses that were third party, not the carrier themselves, who would own and operate, maintain it, it was just like mind blowing. Today, one of the companies is a publicly traded real estate investment trust. It's actually the largest traded in the United States. Not your shopping mall companies, not your office park companies, but cell phone
09:55
companies.
Shawn: Interesting.
Alex: And so I think the experience that I bring and my fellow co-founder and others on the team are this 30 years of how do you solve these things in a way that it's part of the community and it's operated in a safe, reliable, predictable way and who benefits? It's the end users, it's the community members. And so for us, I mean, for me personally, I'm kind of going full circle.
10:24
back to sort of my water, wastewater roots, bringing all best practice. We're not reinventing the wheel. We're not building an army. We're basically taking things that exist and just applying it for a crisis that requires people to think a little bit outside the box.
Angela: Yeah. So why don't you, everybody loves a project story.
Alex: Right.
Angela: Everybody loves, like we can always talk about, you know.
10:51
from a 10,000 foot viewer about the product, like, oh, this is what it does, and this is how it's supposed to work. But everybody loves to hear a real life story. So do you wanna tell us about a project that you're working on right now?
Alex: Sure, sure. I can tell you about three different projects.
Angela: Perfect.
Alex: And there are three different parts of the country.
Angela: Great.
Alex: But I think as you hear sort of the different elements of it, they're actually applicable all over the country. So there's a part of the country,
11:21
that has an island or peninsula, depending how you look at it. And people love going there for vacationing. Yeah. I mean, long storied history, all that. The issue that they have though, that while they have over 150,000 existing homes, 98% of them are on septic today, they all sit on this large aquifer.
11:50
And they have a sandy soil. So there, those 98% of 150,000 homes, many of the septic systems are actually leaching into the aquifer, leaching into the estuaries, getting into the shorelines, all those things. And yet this area is well known for its beauty, its environment, et cetera.
Angela: Pristine.
Alex: Exactly.
12:19
they need 20,000 new homes.
Angela: In an already saturated. In an already…
Alex: well, I mean, it's not, it's not like a hugely dense area, but most of the buildable areas have been built out. So how are you gonna put 20,000 new homes there? And these are homes for nurses and teachers, first responders. Again, I'm not gonna name any names, but like…
Angela: But it's necessary.
Alex: In some places, the fire
12:49
station employees are coming off, you know, United States, so elsewhere, and are driving up to an hour, hour and a half each way. I mean, it's that big of a problem. So there, we're looking at both this new workforce housing opportunities, we're looking at redevelopment opportunities, and last but not least, there are septic to sewer opportunities because in some places,
13:18
I mean, the need is so big. The cost to do it a traditional way is so huge. They're looking at phase 10 or 15 in 2030 or 2040, where we believe that using the approach that we're taking, starting with the Orenco technology, that is less disruptive to install, it's cheaper. It has the synergies for us with broadband.
13:47
We're bringing financing, we're bringing the operational side. We think that we can not only help in the immediate term for the workforce housing, because some of that has stalled because they don't have wastewater treatment capacity, but then we can assist with the septic to sewer projects. I mean, a lot of really hard work and very passionate and devoted people have looked at this. So we don't want to say that all that work is out the window.
14:17
It's not, it's like, hey, here's one more thing to augment everything that you've done. So that's very exciting. Another area is these areas, these fast growing communities that maybe when they design the wastewater treatment facility, they can only see a certain amount of growth.
Angela: Right, right.
Alex: So this is throughout the South, I see it. All these areas that now have all these additional people because, you know,
14:46
through the advent of air conditioning, through the advent of having the ability to work remotely. And plus people through whatever reason kind of want to have a better work-life balance and be places that they kind of work, live and play. So we're getting pulled into these kinds of areas where they would love to have additional housing because the vacancy is so low.
15:14
And again, the wastewater treatment capacity is either near capacity or maybe just doesn't exist. So it's an area that's outside of an existing sewer district. And so, as I mentioned, our projects, sometimes we just do the collection system and we connect to an existing municipal treatment plant or working with Orenco that has treatment products and solutions, we can bring that
15:42
to be part of that development. So that's really exciting. The last one is resorts. And we're seeing resorts, whether it's for skiing or for these tropical islands or tropical islands where again, the planning that was done, the construction that was done, a lot of it was on septic or never thought about, hey, here's this additional growth that we're going to have.
16:13
If it's an area that's near coral reefs, obviously the septics, actually it's not even septics, in some cases it's just lagoons, and cesspools, it is killing the coral reefs. If it's more of a skiing resort area, we're even having conversations around, hey, let's use the treated water for snowmaking. So it's really, really pretty amazing kind of conversations because
16:42
the demand is there, the need is there, whether it's the housing crisis or the other side of the spectrum from an economic development perspective, from a sustainability perspective.
Angela: Reuse, all those things seem to be coming into play.
Alex: Exactly, exactly. So for us it's been very exciting as we get to market and these projects come to fruition.
Shawn: That's neat.
Angela: Yeah, that's really neat. Except for that it hit me when you said
17:10
planning for 2030. I was like, oh, that's a while out. And then I'm like, no, it's actually not. That's five years from now.
Alex: That's right. That's right.
Angela: So are you seeing any other trends in the industry, new things coming up that you're excited about?
Alex: Well, I think the thing that for me is the most exciting and maybe for others, that it's not as exciting, but a big reason why
17:38
this infrastructure isn't being built is because of lack of financing.
Angela: Right, right.
Alex: And financing options.
Angela: It's a huge issue.
Alex: You know, again, without naming any names, there are some very major players out in the finance world that are recognizing that private utility ownership or private infrastructure financing is a big need.
Angela: Yep.
Alex: And as they look at it, it is a big opportunity.
Angela: Right.
Alex: And I think, you know, that might actually be
18:08
something frightening for end users or communities to hear because they think of low interest rates or no 0% financing, which I understand, and we're not trying to take away those projects, but like in the case where a project won't happen to 2040 because there isn't enough money at 0% or whatnot, by us thinking about a capital build, then trying to get as many layers of revenue,
18:38
it actually means that the anchor or the sewer benefits from it. Because we're not having to get this huge return off of just one utility. And so again, going back to the tower model, that's why that model took off is because the carriers understood as, hey, I don't need to pay myself for a tower that only serves me.
19:07
when there's a company that will just lease me the space I need.
Angela: Right.
Alex: So that's how we're kind of thinking about it. And if you think about these private financing companies, the end result from our perspective is combining the technology that's half the price. It's faster to deploy, less disruptive. Combining it with some other utilities, it allows us to make for everyone a lower cost at the end of the day.
Angela: Yeah. Great stuff.
19:37
Alex: Thank you.
Angela: So is there anything else that you want the listeners to know about?
Alex: Well, yes, if you have a, if there's a workforce housing project in your community, let's say 200 units and above, and it's being stalled because of lack of wastewater treatment capacity, email me.
Angela: At?
20:05
Alex:Info at 3ponetworks.com.
Angela: There you go.
Alex: Or go to our website, 3ponetworks.com. We have a very interactive bot in the bottom that can help you through to kind of ascertain what it is you're actually looking for and someone will get back to you right away.
Angela: Great.
Shawn: And that's the number three not spelled out.
Angela: Correct.
Alex: Great question, yes. It's the number three, PO, like operations networks.com.
20:34
Angela: Perfect. All right. Well, thank you so much, Alex, for coming in and talking with us today. And thank you all for listening.
We want to thank you again for joining us today. Before you go, don't forget to subscribe where you listen to podcasts so you're notified when new episodes are posted. Also, you can leave your comments or suggestions through the contact link on our website, www.orenco.com. Until next time, have a great day.
