Please pardon my lapse of delivery with the goods, but the more I delve into the water space, the more I come back to surface carrying what you might call “real pieces of shit.”

These companies, particularly the ones associated with fracking, are all in rough shape – in large part because of the pure natural gas fracking companies themselves pulling back on production when natty prices collapsed.

Also, it’s the water space, so regulations abound and bad balance sheets are easy to find.

I was already aware of some of the issues from my earlier investment in AWK (which was something of a gold speck in cow manure). But I had not expected it to be this bad.

In some cases, these companies are teetering on bankruptcy. But seeing that, I’m disinclined to short any of them because there seems to be some M&A consolidation sweeping through the industry.

At any rate, I will continue to research the issue, but don’t feel like declaring anything more concrete yet.