He founded the Milwaukee Water Council and launched an annual water summit. A couple years later, the United Nations named Milwaukee a ”Global Compact City” with a focus on water. Last year, with $50 million in state backing, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee opened the country’s first-ever School of Freshwater Studies and Marquette University added a water law program.

The federal government has given the water council and its partners $4 million in grants for job creation and water research. Veolia Water, the world’s biggest water technology company, chose Milwaukee as one of six cities to help develop a set of universal water practices for an age of scarcity, and IBM awarded Milwaukee a Smarter Cities grant to fund an innovative aquaculture model.

Representatives from Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Las Vegas all visited Meeusen in the past year to understand how Milwaukee has successfully embraced the water hub idea so quickly. “The answer is simple,” he told them, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “It’s not government-driven.”

Now the city is buying in. City officials are planning to turn a defunct rail yard into an incubator for water-related companies, called the Reed Street Yards. Unlike your average incubator, which hosts only start-ups, this project will foster new companies alongside established businesses and academic research.