Water has always been an issue in California. But drought conditions, not to mention worries about continued supplies of clean water, are turning water into a growth industry in California and elsewhere. Big companies like General Electric, Siemens and Veolia Environnement of France have ambitious plans to bring water to developing countries and clean water everywhere. But many small companies are finding niches and doing well these days, too. Puretec Industrial Water, of Oxnard, California, for example, "grew 34 per cent last year," said Mr Jim Harris, the owner and president. The company, with 90 employees, leaped to $18 million in revenue from $13.5 million in 2006. "We have 4,000 customers," said Mr Harris, "but we have grown 15 per cent or more every year since I started." Puretec dates back to 1965, when Mr Harris started an industrial division of his father's and grandfather's water business. Mr Harris said he decided to go into purifying water for industry because he saw the rising semiconductor companies were demanding purer water for their processes and electric power plants were imposing stricter water standards. "They used to throw any kind of water into turbine generators," said Mr Jed Harris, 32, who is in line to become the fourth generation to head Puretec. "But General Electric found that impurities damaged turbine blades and reduced output. So GE demanded purer water and raised standards of the whole industry." Drug makers and biotech firms, soft drink and food companies and other kinds of industry have raised purity standards in recent years. That increased business for Puretec, which uses membranes, ion transfer and activated carbon filters to remove impurities. Business is also growing because municipalities are looking to recycle water to assure residents and businesses of having enough water at desired levels of purity: Los Angeles is planning a long-term project to recycle wastewater. Such projects increase demand for water treatment technologies, like those supplied by Systematix Company. Mr Charles F Michaud, a chemical engineer, founded Systematix in 1982 to manufacture water filtration materials and to "interpret the complex design parameters of water treatment" so that small companies could keep up with developing technologies and compete with larger firms. "This is a fragmented industry," he said. "More than 500 companies are in water treatment, and the larger firms only have about 20 per cent of the total market." Systematix is small, with $5 million in annual revenue and only four employees, including Mr Michaud, whose title is technical director and who consults widely in the industry.