Speaker 1: This is our American Stories, and we tell stories of
Speaker 1: all kind here on this show. By the way, we
Speaker 1: live in a state where it rains a heck of
Speaker 1: a lot. We broadcast here in Oxford, Mississippi, about an
Speaker 1: hour south of Memphis. And our next story is about rain,
Speaker 1: or rather an innovative entrepreneur's company that collects and bottles
Speaker 1: rainwater per sale out in Dripping Springs, Texas. That's right,
Speaker 1: Dripping Springs. That company is called Richard's Rainwater, and its founder,
Speaker 1: Richard Heineken, can probably be considered the godfather of bottled
Speaker 1: rainwater in the United States. Here's Richard in our own
Speaker 1: Monty Montgomery with the story. The idea behind Richard's Rainwater
Speaker 1: started because of a dirty text as well well. I
Speaker 1: moved out to Dripping Springs. I lived in Austin, Texas
Speaker 1: and moved out to the Dripping Springs to help my
Speaker 1: sister in law build the Austin Zoo out as her
Speaker 1: parents had this property out there, and Susie, my wife,
Speaker 1: and her sister lived out there and her sister was
Speaker 1: raising goats and then it turned into a zoo. So
Speaker 1: I moved Dripping Springs and built a house and out
Speaker 1: here in the hill country, there's no other source for
Speaker 1: water except for well water. And so I drilled a well,
Speaker 1: and the well guy was he was leaving with a
Speaker 1: fistical of my dollars, says mister, Heyneken, you have a
Speaker 1: lot of water there. That's a darn good well, the
Speaker 1: good flowing well. And oh me and I was so excited.
Speaker 1: Go in the house, brand new house, right, and took
Speaker 1: a shower. The hydrogen sulfite was so bad I almost
Speaker 1: threw up into shower. And the water was so hard.
Speaker 1: When Susie did the laundry, the levies could stand up
Speaker 1: in the corner and our hair stood out like fright wigs.
Speaker 1: And we said, man, we can't handle this. Called a
Speaker 1: softener guy, so oh yeah, that's some pretty damn hard
Speaker 1: water there. You can. I can put your tune tandem
Speaker 1: water softeners together. And oh my god. So I looked
Speaker 1: into solutions and I ran across a doctor who became
Speaker 1: a good friend of mine, Mike McKelvin, who had started
Speaker 1: catching rainwater for his wife. To really realize the well
Speaker 1: water out here basically kills plants. It chokes their leaves.
Speaker 1: If you sprayed on their leaves, it carbonizes over so
Speaker 1: they can't they suffocate. So he started a rainwater pleasure
Speaker 1: for his wife's roses, and they flourished and his house flourished.
Speaker 1: He got into putting in his house and he flourished,
Speaker 1: and he was a really advocate for it, and I
Speaker 1: met him and I became one myself. I looked into
Speaker 1: storage and found a fiberglass manufacturer in Texas and ordered
Speaker 1: a fiberglass tank and put it in at a real
Speaker 1: rural Goldberg job and it was all kind of new
Speaker 1: technology to me, but just plumbing as all of us.
Speaker 1: So it's just a water level water. If your gutters
Speaker 1: higher than the tank entrance, it goes in by itself, right,
Speaker 1: And so I did that and hooked up a bump
Speaker 1: to it, and I took a shower, and I was
Speaker 1: the happiest guy in the world. The soap just came
Speaker 1: right off. It lathered up like you can't believe, smelled wonderful,
Speaker 1: It drank good, and the dishes, instead of being chalky,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it became clearer. So my neighbor
Speaker 1: comes over and says, God, what'd you guys just buy
Speaker 1: some new dishes? And I said, no, we're just washing
Speaker 1: them in rain water. Now, I said, oh my god,
Speaker 1: Well I've been buying new dishes every three years and
Speaker 1: a new dishwasher every three years. So I want that.
Speaker 1: So I went called back the Fiberglass guys, Hey, I
Speaker 1: want to be a distributor, and he said, okay, hope,
Speaker 1: let's work a deal. And so so I was selling
Speaker 1: fiber of Us tanks like crazy. I was the biggest
Speaker 1: tank salesman and the whole planet. I put in literally
Speaker 1: hundreds of these things, and I've got thousand people that
Speaker 1: we're relying on tank Town as their source for rainwater
Speaker 1: filters and you know, maintenance prop things, and so that's
Speaker 1: how it happened. Then one day I'm putting in these
Speaker 1: rainwater systems. I have a crew of guys, and I'm
Speaker 1: filling up our water for our consumption, to keep cool
Speaker 1: the whole crew, you know, in a in one of
Speaker 1: those Igloo five gallon water buckets. One day we ran
Speaker 1: out super hot day sun in July, and I so
Speaker 1: I said, okay, guys, I gotta I'm going back home
Speaker 1: to fill up our water again. They say, okay, hurry back.
Speaker 1: So on the way, I thought, you know, I should
Speaker 1: be able to pull into a store and buy this
Speaker 1: stuff and the bulb went off, right, So I okay then,
Speaker 1: So then I was just focused on bottling this stuff.
Speaker 1: So I read the regulations on a water supply realized
Speaker 1: that I needed to be a sort of a licensed
Speaker 1: operator to run of water supply. So I was started
Speaker 1: going to correspondence schools, and I went to Berkeley, Cow
Speaker 1: and Texas, A and M and I got I got
Speaker 1: a license to be a public water supply operator, got
Speaker 1: a permit number and all, and then I started building
Speaker 1: a plant and anyway, then I get to TCQ, the
Speaker 1: government agency that oversees our water supply in Texas, and
Speaker 1: they said, well, mister Hynegen, that's a pretty good idea,
Speaker 1: but rain water is not approved as a source for water.
Speaker 1: It's okay, So where you get in your water? He goes, well,
Speaker 1: you know where we get our water. We get out
Speaker 1: of Lake Travis. So where does that come from? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, it has it's like rain. I said, okay,
Speaker 1: that's okay. So I'm gonna that's why, you know, so
Speaker 1: we need to make this be able to have this
Speaker 1: as a source for water. Oh I don't know, sir.
Speaker 1: And another thing, mister Einigan. Now that we got this
Speaker 1: conversation going, we can't talk to you anymore because you're
Speaker 1: not a licensed engineer. So I went, okay, great, well
Speaker 1: I will come back. So I just had to prove
Speaker 1: it to them that it was a good source for water.
Speaker 1: So I built a little pilot bottling plant and they
Speaker 1: said they proved that. Built it them on bare hands.
Speaker 1: I'm a blacksmith, I'm a sculptor. I've cut the pipes
Speaker 1: and use transits and got the right things and welded
Speaker 1: everything up. And then we go out and put more
Speaker 1: systems in, and I get more some more money, go
Speaker 1: out and buy more metal, put it all up. Then
Speaker 1: I thought, man, this is I can't really start this yet.
Speaker 1: I got the plants going, I got everything going. I
Speaker 1: need some tanks. Ended up buying thirteen tanks and we
Speaker 1: had like two hundred and fifty thousand gallons. And then
Speaker 1: I had the engineers and it's a friend of mine
Speaker 1: and basically wrote it on a napkin. I said, here,
Speaker 1: write this out, make it look real visual. Here's what
Speaker 1: we're gonna do. We're gonna micro we're gonna put it
Speaker 1: through really tiny filters and we're gonna separate it after
Speaker 1: it goes into a couple of tanks, and then we're
Speaker 1: gonna put it through a UV light, and then we're
Speaker 1: gonna store it in a sanitary tank, and then we're
Speaker 1: gonna put just before we bottle, we're gonna put ozone
Speaker 1: in it. Now. Ozone, it's a really great sanitizer. Cities
Speaker 1: water supplies use chlorine, and chlorine is a cancer causing chemical,
Speaker 1: and so we didn't want to do that. The Clean
Speaker 1: Water Act required public water supplies to use chlorine, and
Speaker 1: there's no other source of sanitation they would approve. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have a saying the solution to pollution is delution,
Speaker 1: and it's the same thing these cities use. They just say, well, okay,
Speaker 1: here's a ten gallons of chlorine and so we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to mix that with thirteen thousand and hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy gallons of water and that'll do it. Okay, my
Speaker 1: taste a little chlorine, but anyway, can't do that. And
Speaker 1: so my plan was, I said, Okay, here's the deal.
Speaker 1: If you take me a quart and I'll here's a
Speaker 1: little end of it. We have to end up in court.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell the jury that okay, here's what they
Speaker 1: want me to do with my rain water. They want
Speaker 1: me to put chlorine in it, and that will cause
Speaker 1: cancer possibly. And then rainwater we've already proved it has
Speaker 1: no cancer causing byproducts in it from the way we
Speaker 1: sanitize it, so it seems like a really smart thing
Speaker 1: to do. And so and then also if you say
Speaker 1: I can't do it, then then it'll be it won't
Speaker 1: be good because the jury is going to say, well,
Speaker 1: it's trying. We certainly don't want you to get cancer.
Speaker 1: So we like your idea. They said, well, we kind
Speaker 1: of like your deal, and it's also sustainable. And then
Speaker 1: we'd started doing testing on it and did their monthly
Speaker 1: reports and it all always came back just beautiful. And
Speaker 1: at that point, more people in Austin and out in
Speaker 1: the Hill country we're getting into rainwater collection. So everybody's
Speaker 1: calling this anterest and he's saying, hey, I want to
Speaker 1: put a whole rainwater system in my house. So four
Speaker 1: years later we got the first public water supply using rainwaters,
Speaker 1: sole source of water, without using chlorine. And then that's it.
Speaker 1: It's all over town and it's a pretty damn good feeling,
Speaker 1: but it's a little difficult to get. But Richard makes
Speaker 1: the bottling process sounded pretty easy. After catching it and
Speaker 1: put it in a collection tank, that's the first thing
Speaker 1: to do. Like the city of Austin doesn't have to
Speaker 1: worry about that because they just suck it out of
Speaker 1: the lake. We have to put it in a tank
Speaker 1: that has no light in it because light makes algae
Speaker 1: and algae is not our friend. And then we've processed
Speaker 1: that through more filtrations and then UV light and then finally,
Speaker 1: just before it goes into our bottling line, we add
Speaker 1: an ozone to it at a certain percentage in only
Speaker 1: last fifteen minutes. And then and then we put it
Speaker 1: in the bottle and we sealed the top of the
Speaker 1: bottle and then so that's a perfectly pure bottle of
Speaker 1: water because there's no trihealomethanes and no chemicals in it,
Speaker 1: and it's just it's just a beautiful bottle of water.
Speaker 1: And you can taste it immediately. When you taste it,
Speaker 1: it's sweet because rainwater cleans your mouth. I know it's
Speaker 1: kind of gross, but there's calcium on your teeth all
Speaker 1: day long. It's building up calcium. Wait, it washes that off.
Speaker 1: It's just amazing. So I've never had anybody say, boy,
Speaker 1: that's allows you bottle of water. It's always, hey, this
Speaker 1: is the best darned bottle I've ever had. And it's
Speaker 1: just that's the fact. That's what kept us going because
Speaker 1: it's an absolute truth. There's any kind of comparison of
Speaker 1: another bottle of water. It's just like blind testing. It's
Speaker 1: it's kind of a simple thing to do because you're
Speaker 1: just it's so obvious. And I've come been through a
Speaker 1: lot of them, and rainwater always prevails. And great job
Speaker 1: is always to Monty Montgomery. And you've been listening to
Speaker 1: Richard Heineken Richard's Rainwater, the story behind the product and
Speaker 1: the man year. Oh now we're American stories.