Biomass Markets Could Finance Great Plains Aquifer Recharge
Charm founder Peter Reinhardt argues that water scarcity in the Great Plains is partly a restoration-finance problem: invasive trees and shrubs consume water and block aquifer recharge, but land managers lack a market to pay for their removal. His proposed solution is to turn unwanted biomass into biochar and bio-oil—the latter akin to the liquid-smoke flavoring associated with barbecue sauce—and use the revenue to fund invasive clearing and wetland restoration. Reinhardt says the model could return water to the Ogallala aquifer while improving soils, air quality and carbon storage.
The proposal is a market for restoration work that otherwise goes unfunded
Peter Reinhardt frames water scarcity as a contest among communities, farms, factories, and new AI-related power demand. Gas power for a one-gigawatt data center, he says, consumes about two billion gallons of water a year; new AI demand arrives after existing users have already claimed limited supplies.
But the central tension in his proposal is not simply how to process biomass. Water and ecosystem experts across the region have called for invasive biomass to be removed, Reinhardt says, yet almost nobody is winning that fight because the wood has no market. Charm’s proposed market is meant to finance restoration: it pays for unwanted wood and agricultural residues, converts them into products, and uses that demand to help pay crews to remove invasive plants.
Reinhardt argues that invasive trees and shrubs in the Great Plains consume about twice as much water as all data centers globally. Charm’s feedstock constraint is central to his case: it must be wood that no one else will pay for. The company should not induce land-use change that affects food production or threatens ecosystems, he says; invasive species are suitable because their removal is intended to restore native systems.
In that framing, the economic chain runs from a buyer for otherwise valueless biomass to removal of plants that intercept water, followed by restoration of the wetlands and recharge systems needed to return water to the ground.
Reinhardt’s diagnosis is blunt: “The water didn’t disappear. We just let the wrong plants drink it, and we let our wetlands fill with silt.”
Removing invasives is meant to reopen the aquifer’s recharge pathways
In western Kansas, Peter Reinhardt places the problem above the Ogallala aquifer, which irrigates a large portion of US food production and is being drained. Eastern Redcedar is advancing into surrounding grassland at about 500,000 acres a year. A dense stand intercepts roughly 40% of the rain that falls on it, preventing that water from reaching the aquifer and instead supporting more invasive growth. Left unmanaged, Reinhardt says, open grassland can become a dense cedar stand within a generation.
Along rivers, salt cedar presents a more intensive version of the same problem. An acre consumes two acre-feet more water each year than the native vegetation it displaces—about 326,000 gallons, which Reinhardt compares with a couple of households’ annual water supply. Salt cedar and similar shrubs cover about two million acres across the increasingly dry central plains.
His restoration case depends on clearing those plants while repairing the places where water can enter the ground. Reinhardt describes a modeled 2,000-acre project near the Nebraska–Colorado–Kansas border: remove salt cedar and restore 15 silted-up playas, which he calls the aquifer’s recharge pipes. Within a decade, he projects, the work would put about 285 million gallons of water per year back into the system.
He then applies the same per-acre calculations to a far larger area. Nebraska and Kansas, he says, already contain well over one million acres choked with red cedar, tens of thousands of acres of salt cedar and Russian olive along riverbanks, and more than 22,000 silted-up playas. Clearing invasives and restoring playas across the two states could put roughly 200 billion gallons of water back into the ground annually, he estimates.
| Scope | Work described | Annual water outcome | Comparison offered |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2,000-acre modeled pilot near Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas | Remove salt cedar and restore 15 playas | 285 million gallons within a decade | A town of 60,000 people, two typical Midwestern golf courses, or more than 10% of a one-gigawatt data center’s associated annual water use |
| Kansas and Nebraska extrapolation | Clear invasive plants and restore playas across measured ecosystems | Roughly 200 billion gallons | About two million households or 100 massive data centers |
The intended return is not simply water that invasive plants no longer consume. It is renewed flow into grasslands, river corridors, wetlands, and ultimately aquifer recharge systems.
Biomass revenue is meant to fund removal, not merely make a product
Peter Reinhardt says Charm heats removed biomass to about 500°C through pyrolysis, producing two co-products with distinct roles in the restoration model.
One is biochar, a charcoal-like material Charm returns to soil. Reinhardt describes it as a sponge that helps depleted soil retain water and nutrients through drought, particularly in soils that need it most. He attributes an additional five billion gallons of irrigation-water savings to biochar’s use.
The other is bio-oil, a thick, dark, smoky liquid that Reinhardt identifies with liquid smoke, the barbecue flavoring found on ingredient labels. Charm pumps the bio-oil deep underground into old, depleted oil wells, where Reinhardt says it locks away carbon permanently—“putting oil back where it came from.”
Revenue from those biomass products is meant to pay for invasive-plant removal, while the projected recharge depends on both that removal and restoration of the silted-up playas that receive water into the aquifer.
Reinhardt also attaches further returns to the same chain: native ecosystems begin to recover after removal; the biomass avoids being burned in pile burns or wildfires, which he says improves air quality; biochar helps soil hold water; and bio-oil injection stores carbon underground. “The water, the soil, the air, the climate all benefit at once,” he says.
His broader claim is that this kind of project could restore water flow faster than new development takes it out. If that holds at scale, growth need not simply compete for a shrinking supply: the commercial demand associated with development could help finance work that replenishes local water systems.