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Turning Salty Water Into a Soil Health Solution · Conservation Stories

• 0:08
  Speaker A: You should put salt on your tortilla chips at dinner, not your field. When you're irrigating hsi, water uses sulfurous acid to neutralize bicarbonates, lower soil ph and flush salts from the root zone. Cleaner water, healthier soil, less buildup in your lines. Producers who get their irrigation water dialed in see better nutrient uptake, improved infiltration, and reduced fertilizer costs season after season. Getting your water right is one of the highest return investments on the farm. Our specialists will work with you to design the right system for your needs. No guesswork, just a clear picture of your water chemistry and a plan that fits your operation. So is your water working for you or against you? Find out@hsiwater.com text Salty. That's s a l t y to 979-232-2528.
• 1:01
  Speaker B: Hello friends. This is Tillery Timmins Sims with you again. Welcome back to another episode of Conservation Stories. Conservation Stories is a podcast brought to you by the Sand Hill Area Research Association. And you'll notice that today we're in a different setting. We're actually in my house and I have Marshall Tolson here with me today. We're sitting in front of my beautiful great aunts painting and this painting hung in the Union Baptist Church for many, many until that church was torn down when the like many small towns around here, Union kind of folded up and, and went away. So I don't even think the school's out there anymore. That's kind of how things have gone around here.
• 1:42
  Speaker C: It was a cool story you were telling me about it. You should do an episode on that.
• 1:47
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's actually a great idea.
• 1:48
  Speaker C: Something like that.
• 1:50
  Speaker B: So Marshall, I was in tall and tall, 18 and 1. My favorite Texas trip was Sonora and that is where I met your dad.
• 2:01
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 2:02
  Speaker B: And some of the other great folks down in Sonora. And then we were back. Sarah, the organization was back set up at the 110th anniversary of the Sonora station, which is an amazing historical some that it's in the Texas historical records.
• 2:20
  Speaker C: I believe it.
• 2:21
  Speaker B: Yeah. So some of the buildings are over 100 years old there. And so you and I met there and you were telling me some about what you're doing and I said hey, you should come do a podcast. And so yes, you're recruited. So I'm glad you're here. And you're, you're kind of like my guinea pig to figure out how to do this podcast when we don't have jackalope available. So I appreciate you being flexible and helping us get it all figured out.
• 2:53
  Speaker C: No problem. No problem at all.
• 2:55
  Speaker B: So tell us a little bit about your background.
• 2:58
  Speaker C: So you. You mentioned my dad. I kind of. That's kind of important to understand in the context. He's when as we're recording this, he's the station manager of the. The Sonora station down there. We've always been sort of an ag researcher, extension family. So when I was born, he was working at the Vernon station.
• 3:17
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 3:18
  Speaker C: So I was born not in Vernon. I was born in Wichita Falls. I was actually almost born on the road. Wichita Falls. It was.
• 3:26
  Speaker B: I can believe that. Yeah.
• 3:27
  Speaker C: Because you have to drive.
• 3:28
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 3:28
  Speaker C: Yep. So I was born in Wichita Falls while my family was. Was working at the. The Vernon research station there. And then when I was young, we moved to College Station because my dad went back to school to get his PhD as he was a technician in a couple of labs there.
• 3:46
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 3:47
  Speaker C: Once he got that PhD, you know, you. Nobody likes to hire. Well, people will do it. It's a good idea to not go work at the school that you got your PhD right. They don't want that necessarily.
• 4:00
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 4:01
  Speaker C: So we moved to Arizona where he ran a similar program out there. He established it in a little town called Cottonwood, Arizona. So it's right outside of Sedona.
• 4:11
  Speaker B: Oh, beautiful.
• 4:12
  Speaker C: And Arizona is gorgeous country. Like one third of the state is public land. So for a teenager, I could just get in my truck and just go, oh, wow. And just be out in the desert. And that was a lot of fun.
• 4:25
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 4:26
  Speaker C: But I missed Texas.
• 4:28
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 4:28
  Speaker C: Texas is great. So I came back, went to a. M. Started as a chemistry major. Right. Was also in the core of cadets until I realized that both of those things are pretty difficult and I didn't have the capacity to do both. So naturally I quit chemistry and not the core.
• 4:49
  Speaker B: That was my goodness.
• 4:51
  Speaker C: But. But I ended up, after bouncing around through a couple of, like, university studies majors, I ended up in soil and crop science. And my first day there, I was like, this is great. Because day one, it's like, hey, okay, when you have a job doing this, here's what you're going to be doing. And here's why. Immediately, just like, here's how you're going to do your job. Okay. This is great.
• 5:12
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 5:12
  Speaker C: So I found a home there. I did really well. My GPA got much better once I actually cared about the classes.
• 5:19
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 5:20
  Speaker C: And the chemistry helped with. Especially the soil chem class.
• 5:25
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 5:25
  Speaker C: And we're probably going to talk about that a little bit too. It's also helping with this Job. So I did that. I was looking around. I didn't really want to do any of the jobs that looked like were available at that time. So I got on a plane and joined the Peace Corps.
• 5:43
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 5:43
  Speaker C: Spent a year and a half in Cameroon doing basically ag extension work, but in French, because I was in a francophone part of. Of Cameroon. And then I, I came back so that I could propose to and marry my girlfriend.
• 5:57
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 5:58
  Speaker C: Now important now wife. Yep. We have a one year old daughter. So she's, she's awesome. So very good idea to come back and go.
• 6:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, kickstart that. Yeah.
• 6:08
  Speaker C: But when I came back, I was an extension agent for a while over in Grayson County. I was in Sherman.
• 6:13
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 6:14
  Speaker C: So kind of rounded out my, my ag education in that way because people come in and ask you questions about anything.
• 6:24
  Speaker B: Anything and everything.
• 6:26
  Speaker C: You can say, I don't know, but I'll get back to you. But if you say that too many times, then the Hank Kimball jokes start.
• 6:34
  Speaker B: Oh yeah.
• 6:35
  Speaker C: And you don't really want those. Green Acres is hilarious. Good show. But you don't want to be Hank Kimball. Yeah. Right. So did that for a couple years. And then Dr. Wayne Smith down in College Station, his technician retired and he called me up and said, hey, would you like to come be my technician in the cotton breeding program and you know, get a master's as you're doing it? I said, that sounds fantastic. So then we, we moved down to College Station. I spent, I had four, four planting seasons and three harvests. No, it wasn't like. Yeah, I spent four years growing, growing cotton and learning how to, how to breed cotton and learning how to grow it and how to farm in general and getting that very hands on experience.
• 7:24
  Speaker B: That's great.
• 7:24
  Speaker C: On a smaller scale.
• 7:25
  Speaker B: Right, right.
• 7:26
  Speaker C: But right. Using, using old equipment and just figuring out, okay, how, how does this work in the real world? Because as an extension agent, you know, you teach people what to do. I can tell them how to do it.
• 7:38
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 7:39
  Speaker C: I spent a lot of time in the tractor, under the tractor, just doing the job of growing cotton. And in the, in the wintertime, being a scientist and learning how to do statistics and things like that. So that was, that was a really good experience. Yeah, I left that because I had bills that were greater than what a state agency will pay a technician. So I went, I went private industry for a while as a, as a breeding technician. And then just one. Wasn't quite getting what I wanted to there. And so that's how we ended up here. And some guys that I knew in college, one of my mentors called me and said, have an opportunity that I want to talk to you about with this company called HSI Water.
• 8:29
  Speaker B: They.
• 8:29
  Speaker C: They use sulfur to treat water. How's your chemistry? Basically, they're looking for a guy with some. Some ag experience who can also, you know, explain things or teach things to. To come in and really just kind of do what's called mainstreaming, where.
• 8:47
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 8:48
  Speaker C: Nobody knows about this thing in Texas, so can you come teach people about it and then. Yeah, then we can. We can grow the company in that sense. So that's kind of how I ended up here. That's my life story.
• 8:59
  Speaker B: That's amazing. That's amazing. That's great. I love it. So that is fascinating. So from College Station to Arizona to College Station to Cameroon. Cameroon.
• 9:11
  Speaker C: Gaji Cameroon to Cameroon. Good luck.
• 9:14
  Speaker B: Goodness gracious.
• 9:15
  Speaker C: To Sherman to College Station.
• 9:17
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 9:17
  Speaker C: And.
• 9:18
  Speaker B: And it's so interesting to me that they offered you a cotton. A cotton opportunity when. Now you are back. I mean, this is like, really, you are perfect for what your company's doing, this role.
• 9:30
  Speaker C: Yeah, that's kind of. They. They had been looking in a bunch of different directions, trying to figure out where they wanted to go, but after they interviewed with me, I said, well, I'm. I'm excited about this opportunity because I get to scratch that chemistry itch again. Yeah, I. I can kind of pick up where I left off. And they said, wow, this guy, you know.
• 9:52
  Speaker B: Yeah, we're.
• 9:53
  Speaker C: We like what we think he could build.
• 9:55
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 9:56
  Speaker C: So let's. Let's hire him and see what he can do. And hopefully they're. They're gonna listen to the podcast. Hopefully. I don't disappoint you.
• 10:05
  Speaker B: I'm sure you won't. I'm sure you won't. I'm sure you won't.
• 10:08
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 10:09
  Speaker B: Because you've got, you know, you're one of those kind of people that you meet and you just, you know, make people feel comfortable and feels like they've known you forever. So I think. I think you do just great.
• 10:18
  Speaker C: That's good to hear.
• 10:21
  Speaker B: So hs hsi. What. What is this?
• 10:24
  Speaker C: Right? Okay, so HSI is the. The shortened name, kind of like kfc.
• 10:30
  Speaker B: Sure, sure.
• 10:31
  Speaker C: HSI stands for Harman Systems International because.
• 10:35
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 10:36
  Speaker C: The granddaddy of the company was Harman Systems International that was based at Bakersfield.
• 10:42
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 10:42
  Speaker C: We've. We've moved it to the base of operations is in. Is in Texas now instead of Katy, but the. The parent company and through its reorganization was based in Bakersfield Okay.
• 10:54
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 10:55
  Speaker C: We still have the family members of the family that are working with and.
• 11:00
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 11:01
  Speaker C: Still part of the company.
• 11:03
  Speaker B: Yeah. So, y', all, you've kind of just moved things up to this area because.
• 11:08
  Speaker C: Why?
• 11:09
  Speaker B: Well, what is it? What. What have they been doing in California that we might need here?
• 11:14
  Speaker C: Right. So I guess I could. I could tell their whole story, too. So back in the 1950s, there was a drought, Right?
• 11:23
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 11:24
  Speaker C: Elmer Kelton wrote about this drought, the Time It Never Ran, which is a great book.
• 11:28
  Speaker B: It is a great book. Yep.
• 11:30
  Speaker C: So they wrote there's.
• 11:31
  Speaker A: There's a drought.
• 11:32
  Speaker C: So Darrell Harmon is a dairy farmer in the Central Valley in California, and he's trying to grow alfalfa to keep his herd.
• 11:42
  Speaker B: Right.
• 11:43
  Speaker C: Moving. And it hasn't rained. And they're irrigating. And the way they said it is, it looked like the alfalfa just curled up and was trying to die. It wasn't dying. They were irrigating. They were irrigating the.
• 11:55
  Speaker B: So it was irrigating, but it was dying.
• 11:57
  Speaker C: Irrigating it, but it was still dying. They said it was turning purple and all these different things. And they're trying to figure out what's going on. They can't figure it out. So eventually they go get a backhoe and they just. They just dig a little trench in the field. Like what you would do in a soil science class to go look at the soil profile.
• 12:13
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 12:13
  Speaker C: And they climb down in the hole they just dug, and they see a line of salt buildup. Just like the top foot or whatever it is, just salt built up, and say, okay, this is probably a problem. So they take that information to their extension agent, and he says, okay, yeah, your problem is your water has got too much salts in it. You need to apply sulfur. So they did. They put out granular sulfur, irrigated. And it's kind of like, okay, nothing's. Nothing's happening. So how long is this supposed to take? Well, three to five years. You could start seeing some effects in a year. But if it's. If you. Depending on how you put it out, the bacteria have to process it in the water. So you have to have.
• 12:58
  Speaker B: Oh, my goodness.
• 12:59
  Speaker C: Diosamonis or whatever it is, and water in contact with the sulfur at the same time. And that will turn it into acid, lower the pH of the soil, which will allow those salts to dissolve and wash that out.
• 13:11
  Speaker B: So it's a little more technical than just.
• 13:14
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. It's not. It's not like nitrogen, where you put it out. You probably put it out in a plant available form, it takes it up, and in three days, boom, it's greener.
• 13:22
  Speaker B: Right, Right.
• 13:23
  Speaker C: It starts to be greener.
• 13:24
  Speaker B: Yes. Right.
• 13:25
  Speaker C: So it's a much longer process. So they're, they're growing impatient. Yeah, I've never heard of a farmer who's impatient. That's unheard of. But, but these guys were, were impatient and they looked into it more saying, okay, well, how is this working? Okay, so the bacteria is oxidizing the, the elemental sulfur and doing all of this oxidize. Oxidize. Where have I heard that before? Oh, lighting things on fire, that's oxidation. So that's what they did. They went in their shop, they put together the prototype of sulfurous acid generator, and they put sulfur in one end and they routed the gas into their irrigation somehow and they lit it on fire. And it worked. They were able to dissolve that salt layer. Their alfalfa came back and all this stuff and they said, okay, we've got something here. There's a problem and we've solved it. So then over the course of the next 20 or 30 years, they optimized that thing because the, the concept is simple. Light sulfur on fire, put the gas in some water, problem solved. But there's a lot of calibration and design.
• 14:32
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 14:33
  Speaker C: That needs to happen. So it took them 20 something years to get the design that we have now. So by, by the 70s or 80s, they had the design. It hasn't changed since then. It works.
• 14:42
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 14:43
  Speaker C: It's very delicate. I've been told not to mess with the design. We know you want to tinker and mess with stuff.
• 14:49
  Speaker B: Don't touch it.
• 14:50
  Speaker C: Don't touch that.
• 14:51
  Speaker B: It took us 30 years to get it.
• 14:52
  Speaker C: Don't touch that. And so, so they started doing that. They, I guess, figured out that the manufacturing business, it's a little more lucrative than the dairy business at times.
• 15:05
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 15:05
  Speaker C: So they've kind of, they've rotated into that. Daryl's son John did that, plus some other ventures that they looked at. His grandson Jeff is the one who's been putting together the units out in Bakersfield, California. So they brought on a, A guy, Terry. I'm sorry if I get this wrong. I believe he's, he was an architecture student in the area. They brought him on. Somehow they met and.
• 15:34
  Speaker B: Well, you told me last night. He's basically a genius, a chemical genius.
• 15:37
  Speaker C: Terry is. Terry's a genius. Don't tell him I said that. Terry. No, he, but he is.
• 15:42
  Speaker B: He is.
• 15:44
  Speaker C: He's a genius. He, but he Also found a, a soil science professor, one of the, one of the University of California system schools.
• 15:53
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 15:53
  Speaker C: And he said, I'm not going to go work for this company until I understand the chemistry. So they, they spent 15 years over the course of Terry working with HSI, getting, getting Terry built up in this chemistry and the chemistry is all in, in bicarbonate and bisulfite interactions. That's, that's the basic thing.
• 16:13
  Speaker B: Right. Okay.
• 16:16
  Speaker C: So once Terry understood it well enough that he's like, okay, I'll, I'll come work for you. And Terry handled sales. I think he did a lot of service. He was, he was just all, all things doing stuff, but he's, he's one guy, he has a certain amount of capacity. So he did, he did a lot of good stuff. I think he, he put 2,000 units in the Central Valley in California. There's a unit on, on the old course at St. Andrews Golf course. Somebody in Australia has one, somebody in Japan has one. So Terry did some incredible things.
• 16:45
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 16:47
  Speaker C: And he's, he's been the ambassador of this company and this technology. But then he, he met with our, our CEO who was working in oil and gas at the time. And so they, I think they shared a taxicab. And Terry does what he does and just said, hey, I'm going to tell you about my thing. And so Terry just goes off on this whole story and at the end of it, Derek is like, hold on, wait, what do you have? So that, that kick started a five year conversation where Derek's learning more about it. Derek got his kind of support system put together.
• 17:23
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 17:23
  Speaker C: And then so Derek and the other people in the company got the financing, bought the company and are moving it to Texas because Derek saw. Okay.
• 17:34
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 17:34
  Speaker C: The problem that you're explaining when I'm, when I'm running around doing oil stuff around all of Texas, that's the same problem we're trying to solve in some other things is how do we, how do we get some of this water to producers that like everyone has salty water. If the water comes out of the ground, it's too salty. The plants, we're reducing yield, it's a problem. So he, they figured out what they had. It's like, okay, we could do a lot of work in Texas. So that's when, when they kicked it off, Derek and Jake is the, the partner, he's our coo.
• 18:08
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 18:08
  Speaker C: My, my boss.
• 18:10
  Speaker B: Well, it's a good, this is a good place to come because I know like, well, there's always been, you know, Parts of the, the area that have, you know, salty water, but as our water is, you know, gets, you know, shallower and shallower, so that, that salt content, it continues to build up. And so, yeah, I know. I mean, I've seen, and this was probably six years ago, pictures of, you know, there's enough salt. If it just doesn't touch the plant, it's okay. You know what I mean? And, and so it, yeah, it's a, it's a deal. And you guys come at the right time. And I know too, that they're talking about, you know, experimenting with the Dockham aquifer, which is underneath Ogallala, and, and supposed to have a lot more water, but it is all very saline, you know, and so, yeah, there's. There could be even more opportunity in the coming years too.
• 19:05
  Speaker C: Right, right, right. And so that's, that's what we're looking at in general. This is a conservation podcast. Right. So we, we kind of see ourselves as a, definitely as a conservation company. We provide a piece of equipment that allows you to get more out of the water that you do have so that you don't have to over irrigate. When I was in college, they taught us, okay, if your water, if your ground is too salty, how do you fix a saline soil? You leach it out, but you leach it out with salty water. So you have to do this, this calculation of, okay, how much do you have to over irrigate to get it?
• 19:44
  Speaker B: You can't do that here. It's a waste.
• 19:46
  Speaker C: Yeah, you don't have the water anyway. You don't have a choice.
• 19:48
  Speaker B: It's not even possible.
• 19:49
  Speaker C: So how do we, how do we conserv Preserve our productive lands?
• 19:52
  Speaker B: Right.
• 19:53
  Speaker C: While using the water that we have available.
• 19:54
  Speaker B: Exactly.
• 19:56
  Speaker C: Any, any groundwater that you pump out of the ground is going to have more salt than what a plant would prefer. Right. Because the water is going to reflect the, the geology of the rocks around the aquifer and all of the soil that it percolated through to get there in the first place.
• 20:14
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 20:14
  Speaker C: So it's got too much salt in it. Whereas, like rainwater, the water that before we started pumping water out of the ground. Rainwater is exactly perfect. Rainwater has a pH of 5.5 to 6.5. It's slightly acidic.
• 20:30
  Speaker B: That's amazing. I wonder who figured out we needed that kind of water.
• 20:34
  Speaker C: Right. I have an idea. But yeah, so, like, that's, that's, that's the way that plants were, I would say, designed to grow in this rainwater. The Rainwater falls, it mineral. Mineralizes what's in the soil, and that's the system as it was designed.
• 20:51
  Speaker B: Right.
• 20:51
  Speaker C: But in places where it doesn't rain enough, you can't. You can't grow a crop and farm profitably with just rainwater.
• 21:01
  Speaker B: Yeah, not here for sure.
• 21:03
  Speaker C: No.
• 21:03
  Speaker B: Well, they're. They're finding ways, but it's very difficult, right? It is very difficult. And certainly if you can, you know, have the ability to irrigate, you know, think about here 30 years ago, just, you know, people say, man, y', all, you can pretty much control so many things about. Because you've got all this irrigation, you know, available to you, and you're not in. And you don't get too much water. Right. You know, and so, yeah, I think it's really true that we were fortunate, but as time has gone by, we just don't have the. We just don't have the amount of water that we used to have anymore. So. So you're kind of here just trying to connect and. And get the word out that there's a tool that's available and there's an option out there now.
• 21:51
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 21:51
  Speaker B: So we.
• 21:52
  Speaker C: I mean, we see our technology as. As the way to get your irrigation water as close to rainwater as possible while mimicking the way that nature creates
• 22:01
  Speaker B: rainwater in the first place. Wow.
• 22:04
  Speaker C: If you. If you listen to Terry talk, he's got a ton of videos on YouTube.
• 22:08
  Speaker B: Great.
• 22:09
  Speaker C: He explains kind of the chemistry of what's happening in volcanoes. Volcanoes are burning sulfur, producing this gas in that process, as that sulfur dioxide makes its way into the atmosphere, that's what's acidifying the rain. So naturally, that is the way that nature creates the rain that falls. And that is perfect. It's not from CO2. The pressure in the atmosphere isn't great enough to put CO2 and make carbonic acid that falls. It's sulfur dioxide.
• 22:39
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 22:41
  Speaker C: So every time a volcano goes off, that's what's happening, that process. Yeah, the process has been helped a lot by, like, cars burning. And then also coal plants put some sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere.
• 22:57
  Speaker B: So, yeah, that's something that you don't ever hear about. Like, you never hear anything that they've done that's positive. So that's really interesting.
• 23:04
  Speaker C: It's. There's a. There's a way. And obviously, acid rain, when it gets.
• 23:09
  Speaker B: Yeah. When it gets really bad buildings, that's bad. Yeah. So there's got to be that there's a balance there. Yeah, for sure. Interesting.
• 23:18
  Speaker C: So we. We kind of joke about our. Our technology being like a little mini volcano. It's a very controlled volcano that is treating the groundwater to make it as close to rain as you can get without having, like. Without doing reverse osmosis and stripping everything out or distilling the water and then going back and adding things. Doing.
• 23:37
  Speaker B: Right.
• 23:38
  Speaker C: Doing things that would be so expensive it wouldn't work.
• 23:42
  Speaker B: It's like overkill.
• 23:43
  Speaker C: Yeah, it's way overkill. And that's actually the economic impact and the environmental impact of having to do all of that just to turn on and reapply it to land. You're not gaining anything from that. So why not just take one of the chemical processes that nature is already doing.
• 23:59
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 23:59
  Speaker C: That purifies this water and makes it fit to be fantastic irrigation water in the first place and just kind of mimic that in this little machine. It's like three by three. Okay. It's maybe our most heavy unit is like 200 or. No, 600 pounds that it's small. You just plug it in. You plug it in.
• 24:17
  Speaker B: You're kidding. Oh, wow.
• 24:19
  Speaker C: I guess I need to show you.
• 24:21
  Speaker B: We need to see some pictures.
• 24:22
  Speaker C: They're not that big. You know, you could set them by a center pivot. I see people have got tanks, big old tanks of something I haven't figured.
• 24:28
  Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. Fertilizer, probably. Yeah.
• 24:30
  Speaker C: Fertilizer injection. There you go. So it. It would take up about the same amount of space. And you plug it in there. You just keep the hopper full. It operates a lot like a Traeger grill. You get these pellets that come in. You light a fire in the little.
• 24:44
  Speaker B: The burn chamber.
• 24:45
  Speaker C: We can automate that so that you don't even have to be there. It'll light itself.
• 24:49
  Speaker B: Wow. So you put one. You put one at each pivot, which makes sense around here because we have so many wells that are running a single pivot most of the time. Yeah.
• 25:01
  Speaker C: So you can. You can do that if you're using one pivot at a time. You could actually put it on a trailer and move it around.
• 25:07
  Speaker B: So there's.
• 25:08
  Speaker C: There's some options.
• 25:09
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because obviously it's not so big that it can't be portable.
• 25:13
  Speaker C: Exactly. Or if there are some people who have done it where they have. They have one unit and they plumb it in, they fill a vat of this weak acid. And I can. I can go into the chemistry, too. Or we could save it for the radio show. Whichever one you want.
• 25:30
  Speaker B: We are going to do radio show today, too. So. So you leave it for my brothers, they'll ask you all those questions, and I'll just be like, you all sound like Charlie Brown's school teacher.
• 25:39
  Speaker C: Yeah, my wife says that sometimes, but. So you could. You can fill a vat of this acid and do it the same way. Like a golf course. They do sulfuric acid injection a lot of times, and our acid doesn't corrode as bad as sulfuric acid does. But you could fill a vat full of acid and then have that inject using the same injection system much, much more economically. Because you're buying sulfur pellets instead of buying someone else who's. Who's made the acid. You're buying a lot of water. You're shipping that water you already have.
• 26:19
  Speaker B: Right, Right.
• 26:19
  Speaker C: Are you doing that?
• 26:20
  Speaker B: Why are you doing that?
• 26:21
  Speaker C: Print is lower if you use our system.
• 26:24
  Speaker B: Exactly.
• 26:24
  Speaker C: So it's. Wow, there's options. Right?
• 26:28
  Speaker B: You know what's interesting to me, and I actually did a podcast several months ago with a guy that I met in California. And what I found interesting about California was how regulation has driven a lot of invention there, you know, and innovation. And I asked him, I was like, come on. I'm like, you know, in Texas, we're like, why do you live in California? And he. He's like, that's where I'm from, you know? You love where you're from, you know, and so I was like, you know, it was really a great conversation and, like, for him to be able to talk about the value that's there and in California and what, you know, you just. You just got to recognize the fact that, like, sometimes we don't change because we aren't made to, even when we need to.
• 27:17
  Speaker C: Right. Was he the. Was he the guy who was the dairy farmer and the radio? Yeah.
• 27:21
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 27:21
  Speaker C: That was a good one.
• 27:21
  Speaker B: Yes. So good. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that's kind of what I think. I think about a lot of things that, you know, the technology that's been in other places that maybe we haven't needed until now or we just haven't been aware of, you know, and things, you know, they start to change when you lose water.
• 27:43
  Speaker C: Yeah. Necessity is the mother of invention.
• 27:46
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 27:46
  Speaker C: Sometimes we create our own necessity, and sometimes the necessity is, well, I've got 20 years of irrigation left with water that is salty enough that it's like, was it Troy, where they. They destroyed the agriculture of the region by salting them? Yes, yes, we're doing that.
• 28:04
  Speaker B: Yeah. So. So that's interesting idea to, like. So, you know, a lot of the Other things that we have around here are, you know, old oil fill, you know, old wells and pads and that kind of stuff that you can see even where when it rains that, that, that you can just see like where the salt has run off and there's just, just dead. Yeah. Is it, is there a potential for maybe some soil remediation?
• 28:32
  Speaker C: Oh, yeah, absolutely. So a part of what makes us feel like we're a conservation company is the fact that we can help you get more out of the rain when it does fall. So the problem with the bicarbonate buildup in your soil is it's a lot like when you get lime buildup on your shower head. If you live in College Station or Bryan or anywhere with as bad a water as what we have, you know that you've got to be cleaning out your shower head or you lose pressure.
• 28:58
  Speaker B: Right.
• 28:58
  Speaker C: All the time. Well, so you get the same thing in the soil when you have that bicarbonate buildup. It just clogs the ability for water to move through. So if you can remove all of that, you open up these pores and suddenly water can percolate when it's deeper and it can infiltrate at the surface of the soil. So when the rain falls, like we had some rain last night, how much of that do you think ran off?
• 29:21
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
• 29:22
  Speaker C: So what we've found is we allow percolation through the system. So when it does rain, you get much less runoff. Like at the historic or the Sonor a research anniversary day, the Rangeland guys are always there with their simulator. This is bare ground. This is ground, and this is fantastic ground.
• 29:40
  Speaker B: Right.
• 29:41
  Speaker C: What they're showing you is how much gets percolated versus how much runs off.
• 29:44
  Speaker B: Right.
• 29:44
  Speaker C: Well, our, our system will do the kind of the same thing as getting roots through. It's just punching new holes. We're opening up the holes that were already there, but they're clogged.
• 29:52
  Speaker B: They're clogged.
• 29:53
  Speaker C: So when it does rain, instead of you losing, you know, half of that rain and some of your topsoil to runoff, it actually goes in the ground. You can keep it there.
• 30:04
  Speaker B: Yeah, and that helps, you know, because ultimately whatever water goes into the ground, you know, eventually goes back to the aquifer. It takes a long, long time, but,
• 30:13
  Speaker C: you know, you're great. Great, great, great.
• 30:16
  Speaker B: Yes, yes, exactly.
• 30:18
  Speaker C: But I mean, we, we expect to be around that long, right? People are going to be here.
• 30:22
  Speaker B: Yes, we do.
• 30:23
  Speaker C: So we have to, we do have to think. Yeah, but when it, when it does rain, you're not giving that away. Right. Like once, once that water hits a navigable stream, it's not yours anymore. Yeah, but we live in Texas.
• 30:38
  Speaker B: We have no navigable streams around here. I don't know if you've noticed, but we do have like, you know, far ditches where they just. It all goes into the side of the road.
• 30:44
  Speaker C: Well, navigable in part, is navigable and full. So even if, when it dumps into the coast, that stream, you know, you could fit a kayak through it. Yeah, but so once it, once it hits a, a pattern flow, then.
• 30:55
  Speaker B: Yes, it's not anymore.
• 30:56
  Speaker C: You can't really. Which that may not be true. Someone can fact check me on that.
• 31:02
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 31:02
  Speaker C: But if the water depends on what
• 31:04
  Speaker B: the, what day the Supreme Court wakes up on.
• 31:07
  Speaker C: But that, that water in Texas, while it's still in your field, that's your water.
• 31:12
  Speaker B: Right.
• 31:12
  Speaker C: Why are you, why are you letting that go downstream then? It just has to go into some flood mitigation for somebody else, because that's what we've got in our waterways now. So if you can open up the pore spaces in your soil, you can keep a lot more of your water. And we know that that works because some people, they, you can put this system in a pond, treat the pond, irrigate out of the pond, or if you just want to keep the algae down in your pond, that bisulfite ion has some algaecidal properties to it. So some people thought their irrigation pond was lined. It was not lined. There was just so much bicarbonate buildup that it, that it had sealed itself. Once they treated it and they got this acid in there, it dissolved all of it. They came out the next morning and half their water's gone. They said, they said, oh, no, they. So they figured out they had to just, they had to let it drain and then come back in later with sodium bentonite and line their pond. That way they could use it for irrigation. So we tell people, if you, if you're running an irrigation ditch, like if you're on a canal system.
• 32:18
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 32:19
  Speaker C: And, and that's not concrete. It's not lined. Don't treat the water in the whole canal. You've got to treat it when you get it out of the field because otherwise you're just going to, you're going to lose all that water. It's going to just drain. It's that effective at dissolving bicarbonate.
• 32:32
  Speaker B: So is it high levels of saline that you guys can handle?
• 32:37
  Speaker C: We, we handle all sorts, basically. So it's the sodium. We don't Take the sodium out of the water. You can't, you can't really do that without distillation. But it makes it so that the sodium doesn't stay put. Sodium building up in the soil, it replaces calcium on the cation exchange capacity. And that's what's causing problems because you're not keeping any of the nutrients that you want in the soil. But sodium is so soluble that if you wash it, it will go to the edge of wherever that horizon is where the water gets to. So if you water 3 inches, by the time it gets through the soil, it'll be a foot down. You've now moved all of that sodium through to the end of the root zone. It's out of the root zone. And so the less soluble but very, very important plant available nutrients, like your calcium, nitrates, everything, those are still in the root zone.
• 33:35
  Speaker B: Okay, but they're not.
• 33:36
  Speaker C: It's not like you've got a bunch of sodium getting in the way to where it's, it's blocking the root.
• 33:41
  Speaker B: It's blocking it. Wow.
• 33:42
  Speaker C: Yep.
• 33:43
  Speaker B: Oh, that's interesting. Wow.
• 33:47
  Speaker C: Yeah, it's a lot to think about. I had, I had never thought about, like, soil health in those terms until they sent me, they sent me a, like a recording of Terry talking. They sent me some PDFs, and like, this is what we've got. And it. I, I watched the recording and two hours later, after I had read everything, it's, oh, this is genius. Wow. Why did we not.
• 34:09
  Speaker B: Right.
• 34:10
  Speaker C: Teach this in class? We don't, we don't think in those terms.
• 34:13
  Speaker B: Right. Well, we haven't needed it till now.
• 34:16
  Speaker C: No, we haven't.
• 34:17
  Speaker B: But I think there's a lot of. I mean, probably some people have needed it, we just haven't had it. Or maybe they've had some other kind of system. But I know that you're going to do really well here, you know, because it's a solution that people can actually put to work. And it, and it's got to be something, you know that. Now, as you know, of course, cotton prices have gone back up, thank goodness. But, you know, it's just, yeah, it's expensive, you know, and so margins are so tight. But I know that what we say a lot around here is you're not, you're selling water. You're not really selling a commodity. You know what I mean?
• 34:54
  Speaker C: So what, water and fertilizer.
• 34:56
  Speaker B: Yeah. And so you've got to figure out like, like how to get the best use out of that water. And man, when you can actually Benefit more from every inch of water. That's a, that's a big plus.
• 35:10
  Speaker C: So we've got one, one study. It was out of the research station in El Paso. It was a one year study. They treated place to start a plot and I think this was back in 2014. They, they used our technology on their irrigation for one year and they said they saw a 30% reduction in salt buildup in the soil. So not only did it not get worse, it got 30% better in one year and they saw a 20% bump in yield versus the county average. And they, and I would. As a cotton guy, I need to look at this because like this sounds too good to be true. I don't know. They said they saw a 10% increase in fiber length.
• 35:51
  Speaker B: Really?
• 35:52
  Speaker C: So if you were selling at a discount.
• 35:54
  Speaker B: Right.
• 35:55
  Speaker C: Maybe that's to get you into the discount area for your upper half mean length.
• 35:59
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 36:00
  Speaker C: I don't know. So that, that would have some economic return.
• 36:02
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 36:03
  Speaker C: Not having to sell your cotton for less.
• 36:05
  Speaker B: You know, one thing that might be interesting too is there's a company that we've worked with some and they have worked with a larger corporation that wanted. Needed some water offset credits. You know. And so they have provided these new moisture probes and they're not just to chest tech moisture because they've got some kind of sensor that runs also, you know, horizontal out from the, from the right rod, you know that you stick in the ground. And it doesn't just. So it's measuring also the uptake of the plants. So it'd be really interesting to combine.
• 36:45
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 36:45
  Speaker B: That what they're doing with what you guys have. Because you could really see like. Okay. In the. In terms of like the benefits that I'm. That you're bringing of how much more plant available nutrition you're bringing and what that means of making each water, each inch of water more efficient.
• 37:08
  Speaker C: And we, we think. I know this is not. This goes against common knowledge. Right. But I'll start with the foundation. So you've got five soil forming factors. Right. One of them is parent material and all of these different things. We were taught that they're kind of trying to make a sixth soil forming factor. It's called management, which before it was just interesting under like biology like what animals are existing on this? Well, if human management can affect soils very quickly. And we're finding out they can affect soils very quickly.
• 37:43
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 37:45
  Speaker C: We think through management you can actually meaningfully lower the PH of your soil to be at that 6 to 6.5 range. Which is where most important nutrients in the soil are the most available or not the most available. It's just where most of them are readily available. Because some things are better at a lower pH, some things are better at a high pH. But to get generally everything just about right, it's about 6.5. And you got to fix your water first because your soil will reflect whatever water is hitting it. That's why in the east, where it rains four feet a year, their soils are acidic. In a rainforest, the soils are acidic in places where it's dry. They're basic.
• 38:26
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 38:27
  Speaker C: Because the rain hasn't mineralized all this stuff in the soil yet to get to that. That more acidic.
• 38:33
  Speaker B: Right. Man, there's so much. I know so little about any of this stuff that's so fascinating. I mean, just to think about, you know, I've always known the difference between. In fact, in my backyard, it just, I could not get. I mean, it's been bad this year, like bad. And I. I generally have. I mean, pretty much it's not hard for me to grow things. But this year it was terrible, you know, And I finally just decided, okay, I need to water everything really, really, really deep. You know what I mean? So slow water, everything really deep, you know what I mean? And it did. Okay. But then it rained and then it. And you just can't. I mean, the implus. What am I putting out there? I'm putting out their city water, which, you know. Right, yes.
• 39:18
  Speaker C: Does the shower head have scale build up?
• 39:20
  Speaker B: Oh, let me tell you something. You know what we call around here is like the town without a toothache, you know, because we, you know. Okay, yeah, we have, we have a lot of hard water. Yes, yes. Yeah. So. But you know, also just that so much stuff has been stripped out of it and put back in it, and you know what I mean? And so, you know, you're just not getting the very best. And it's just the difference between the pot that's on my front porch that I can only use, you know, it's not getting rainwater, which just says to also need to put rain collection on my house so that I can. I know exactly. Yeah, yeah.
• 39:56
  Speaker C: My. My dad has a saying and this is. He. He's applying this to like fire science. Like when the. When they'll do a prescribed whatever. You come back later. If it hasn't rained for six months, when you come back, what's left is still the fire, the charred plant vegetation. But if it'll rain the next week, you come back in Three weeks. And it's the greenest grass that you've ever seen. So he says a well timed rain will make anyone look good.
• 40:23
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 40:25
  Speaker C: And I've, I've used that when I've talked to golf course superintendents as well. And that clicks with them.
• 40:30
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 40:31
  Speaker C: Because they're watering. A lot of those guys are watering with process. Like a reclaimed city water.
• 40:36
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 40:36
  Speaker C: So we think our salts are high in our drinking water that we're watering our gardens with.
• 40:41
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 40:42
  Speaker C: Those guys, they, they have to plant species that have been.
• 40:48
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 40:48
  Speaker C: Selected and then bred to be more tolerant. So like seashore paspalo grass that grows by the sea.
• 40:57
  Speaker B: Goodness.
• 40:58
  Speaker C: They're putting it on a green or a fairway so that it can tolerate the grass that we're watering it with.
• 41:04
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 41:04
  Speaker C: Inland. Hundreds of miles inland where it never would have grown naturally. But that's what they have to do to keep it alive.
• 41:12
  Speaker B: Right.
• 41:12
  Speaker C: And I'm still, I have to tell them too. Okay. So it's, it's got a genetic tolerance, but what do you think its biological preference is?
• 41:19
  Speaker B: Right, right.
• 41:20
  Speaker C: So I'm sure the paspalum would still do better if you watered it with something that wasn't as salty.
• 41:25
  Speaker B: Right.
• 41:26
  Speaker C: Which is rain for the most part.
• 41:28
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 41:29
  Speaker C: So when it, when it rains on a golf course, the superintendent is happy.
• 41:32
  Speaker B: Yeah. But if you can, if you can, you know, use what you guys have to to make your water as close to rain as possible. That is super beneficial. Wow.
• 41:43
  Speaker C: And we, we think that the.
• 41:45
  Speaker B: You make household units for this.
• 41:47
  Speaker C: Not yet. I'm working on it. Terry and I have been bouncing ideas back and forth. I had. Well, I won't tell you what my idea. I don't want to.
• 41:57
  Speaker B: Don't give it away.
• 41:57
  Speaker C: I don't want to do free R D for anybody else, but my idea was bad. And Terry's idea is objectively much better.
• 42:05
  Speaker B: Yeah. He might have been added a little bit longer.
• 42:08
  Speaker C: He's got it. He's got a little bit more expertise.
• 42:11
  Speaker B: Exactly, Exactly. Wow.
• 42:13
  Speaker C: But we're, we're looking at it. It's just like the way it exists right now. It would have to be like the size of a coffee cup to treat the gallons per minute. And there's just no way.
• 42:22
  Speaker B: Yeah, there's just no way.
• 42:23
  Speaker C: But we can, we're looking at it.
• 42:26
  Speaker B: Yeah. Well, especially, you know, around here where there's some larger homes that, you know, they have, you know, 10 acres or. You know what I mean? Things like that, you know, that, that would be another, you know, if you
• 42:40
  Speaker C: run 50 gallons per minute for at least 45 minutes. We have. We have a unit that'll. That'll do that.
• 42:48
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
• 42:49
  Speaker C: So I think the smallest system that I've ever heard of is a 1 acre drip system.
• 42:52
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 42:53
  Speaker C: On an orchard.
• 42:54
  Speaker B: I was going to say a vineyard, which I.
• 42:57
  Speaker C: On the ride up here, I saw a lot of vineyards.
• 43:00
  Speaker B: We have a lot of vineyards. In fact, you will be talking with my brothers today about. And both of them are. They're both grape guys. Okay. Yes. And my brothers, my brother is. So the land that they're on is like our family land and it runs through a draw. And so up on the hill is the vineyard, but down in the draw have been salt cedars.
• 43:27
  Speaker C: Right.
• 43:28
  Speaker B: So that tells you there's salt water all in that underneath there. You know what I mean? And so that's going to be a fun conversation that we will have with them because they'll probably have much more intelligent questions to ask you see if
• 43:42
  Speaker C: they can stump me. I think it's. Is it a call in show?
• 43:45
  Speaker B: No, it's. Well, you know, actually we were talking about doing that and I should have started that. We need. We do need to get that started, so that would be really fun.
• 43:53
  Speaker C: I told. I told my, my co workers that it might be a call in show and I think they're. They're gonna try to call.
• 43:59
  Speaker B: Oh, well, then we'll give the number out. Because we can give the number out.
• 44:02
  Speaker C: Yeah, they might. We'll see. By the time this is posted, we'll
• 44:07
  Speaker B: know if we stay stumped. You or not?
• 44:10
  Speaker C: What's the specific heat capacity of. Whatever. Derek, go home. Don't you have more to do?
• 44:18
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. Well, this has been really interesting and it really kind of primes the pump for the conversation this afternoon. And we'll probably have to give some of our listeners there some background because we'll have a lot more people listening on the radio and my.
• 44:34
  Speaker A: Live.
• 44:35
  Speaker B: Live. Yeah. So there will be no ability to edit.
• 44:38
  Speaker C: No. Whatever I say, that's dumb. It's just gonna stay.
• 44:40
  Speaker B: It's just gonna stay there forever.
• 44:42
  Speaker C: Forever for my grandkids to find.
• 44:45
  Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly. I know, right? That's so funny. Well, thanks for. Thanks for patience and thanks for helping me get all this set up and being my guinea pig.
• 44:56
  Speaker C: Absolutely. I said I work for the extension, so that's.
• 45:00
  Speaker B: You just got to be a mini trade.
• 45:01
  Speaker C: You just roll with.
• 45:02
  Speaker B: That's right. You just gotta roll with punches and you got to be a jack of many trades.
• 45:06
  Speaker C: See what's going wrong and fix it and just try to keep going.
• 45:09
  Speaker B: Exactly. Well, Marshall, thanks for being here. And friends, thanks for joining us on this episode of Conservation Stories. And you're going to learn a lot more about. In fact, you'll see this after you've seen the radio show. So you'll continue to learn more about this. And this will give you a little more background. So we are grateful that you were here. And we will see you on the next episode. Thanks.