While residential water filtration systems still make up the bulk of Clear Water Filtration’s business, the Waitsfield-based company has been growing in several new areas recently.
For more than 38 years Clear Water has been offering Vermont, New York and New Hampshire customers comprehensive water testing and treatment systems. Now the company – family owned since 1980 – is branching into more work on community and public drinking water systems.
Not long ago, Clear Water Filtration completed a new water system for Smuggler’s Notch as well as one for HP Hood in Barre.
“It’s exciting for us and represents a new realm of professionalism for us which is fun and a great challenge,” said co-owner Jenneth Fleckenstein. She and her brother, Steve Parker, purchased the business from their father and its founder, Jim Parker, in 2015. Since that time, they moved the business to a new facility at Mad River Park in Waitsfield and are enthusiastic about the future.
Part of the future will be work arising out of new legislation that requires all schools and child care facilities to sample for lead before the end of 2020 as well as regulations requiring all public drinking water systems to be tested for PFAS by this December.\
“We've elevated our company in this industry and we're very proud of our team. Steve and I have been involved with the business for 15 years; we've worked in all positions of the business. We're passionate small business owners who care deeply for our customers and employees,” Jenneth said. The company employs 11 full-time employees.
Jenneth and Steve are proud of Clear Water’s role in the local and global communities. They have donated their services to local organizations such as the Rotary, local schools and day care facilities. Clear Water was also the first corporate sponsor for the Vermont-based organization Pure Water for the World, a nonprofit centered around education and prevention of disease through waterborne illness in rural and underserved communities of Haiti and Honduras. Jen and Steve have both traveled to Honduras to install filtration and Jen has traveled to Haiti on several occasions leading volunteer groups.
Jenneth and Steve put a little more on their plates this year – or in their glasses – when they joined their friend Brett Seymour in founding Waitsfield-based Collaborative Brewing, co-located in the Clear Water Filtration space, and they are opening a brewery this fall at the Mad River Green Shopping Center (where the Butchery was located.)
“Clear Water has been fortunate to work with many of the greatest breweries in the world – our passion for brewing grew from our connection to this industry through water. We partnered with our childhood friend with commercial brewing experience to start Collaborative Brewing,” Jenneth said.
And going forward? They’ll continue to focus on the strength of their business, working with breweries outside of Vermont by shipping custom-designed water treatment skids – designed to optimize the water quality of the brew house and the mechanical systems of the brewery.
Cheers!
Clear Water Filtration
802.496.5544
