Stuart company's water-filter unit to go on the road

The Palm Beach Post
By Lori Becker
Saturday, December 10, 2005

A Stuart firm is putting its water-purifying system on wheels with the help of a national truck manufacturer.

In another move to push its product in the red-hot homeland security market, Brisben Water has signed a five-year deal with Pierce Manufacturing Inc. to build and market a truck with a built-in filtration unit that will clean polluted or contaminated water.

Called a "tactical water filtration truck," the six-wheel-drive off-road vehicle is aimed at getting clean water to people in times of disaster.

"We fully expect this thing to be utilized by military, homeland security, state governments and local municipalities throughout the U.S. and the world," Brisben Water President Mickey Donn said. "It's able to go places a normal vehicle would not be able to go."

Brisben Water, a subsidiary of 6-year-old UltraStrip Systems Inc. in Stuart, developed a filtration unit that can turn water that's polluted with either chemical or biological contaminants into drinking water.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency in March 2004 tested the $1 million machine and officially verified Brisben Water's claims.

In September, Brisben Water took one of the 40-foot containers to Waveland, Miss., where it pumped thousands of gallons of water a day from a hydrant to provide showers and drinking water to the community left without power or water after Hurricane Katrina.

But the scope of the storm's destruction showed the company that it needed to get its equipment over fallen trees and through flooded roads.

So it went to Pierce.

Appleton, Wis.-based Pierce, a division of the $3 billion Oshkosh Truck Corp. in Oshkosh, Wis., is the nation's largest manufacturer of custom fire and emergency trucks.

Oshkosh also builds several types of truck for the U.S. military.

With the truck maker's help, Brisben Water will reconfigure its system for a 20-foot vehicle.

"There's a great need for drinkable water," said Jim Parker, Pierce's vice president of homeland security and government sales. "By taking the Brisben Water technology and putting it on top of one of the Pierce or Oshkosh chassis, we should be able to supply it. This is going to be a great marriage."

Joe Allbaugh, former chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, introduced the two companies.

Brisben Water signed a business-development deal in June with Allbaugh, looking to his connections in the emergency-response and homeland-security markets.

Allbaugh, a former aide and campaign manager for President Bush, became a consultant for Pierce after leaving his FEMA post in 2003.

"Mobility is the key when you're in the world of logistics and trying to respond to natural disasters," Allbaugh said. "When water suppliers were down (after Katrina), there was no way, other than trucking in potable water or bottled water, to give residents clean water. This is an answer."

A clean water supply is critical in disaster response, said Dr. Tee Guidotti, chairman of the environmental and occupational health department at George Washington University in Washington. "It certainly makes sense to have mobile capabilities to make sure we don't get completely stymied the way we were with Katrina," he said. "The problem is deployment. Unless every city has such a (vehicle), it's going to take time to get it there."

Pierce's Parker said the company plans to start building the first truck within the next two months to use as a demonstration model. The vehicle's price has not been set, he said.

Brisben Water's Donn said, "We hope they'll be able to start getting contracts on these pretty quickly."