Island Water Technologies is tackling environmental and financial problems that are troubling homeowners today and looming large for small Canadian towns in 2020.

Based in Montague, P.E.I., the company uses patented technology to treat water in septic systems serving people’s homes or small communities. While the focus in water treatment usually is on big plants in urban areas, there is an acute need for affordable solutions in rural areas and small towns.

 “The thinking up to now has been, ‘We need a big, shiny waste-water treatment plant,’” said Patrick Kiely, the company’s Irish-born CEO. “And, in reality, that’s not what most places need. You can offer decent solutions that cost a fraction of those big plants.”

IWT now has two products on the market. They’re so impressive that the company is one of three Canadian companies recently named to the GEW 50, a group of 50 promising startups from around the world selected by Washington, D.C.-based Global Entrepreneurship Week.

The first product is ClearPod, a small device that is dropped into the septic tank of an individual home or small business to clean out contaminants. Island Water Technologies recently installed nine ClearPod units at a golf course outside Toronto, and has been talking to a national chain of hardware stores about carrying the product.

Nova Scotia could be a huge market for ClearPod because 30 per cent of the households rely on septic tanks, and they tend to fail after 20 years. The company is now in discussions with provincial regulators to move into the market.

The second product is Regen, a renewable energy-powered sewage treatment system designed for communities of about 250 people. It features a modular system (a shipping container with equipment inside) powered by solar panels. The product is parked beside a town’s sewage system and operates at minimal cost, with no need for electricity from the grid.

Island Water Technologies now has a test model in operation near Truro, and is working with several governments in Atlantic and Northern Canada on possible installations.

The federal government has mandated that by 2020 all towns and villages must have a certain standard of water treatment facilities. But rural towns across the country are beset by falling populations, shrinking economies and falling revenues. Regen offers a low-cost solution to the regulations.

The science behind the two products is a fixed-film treatment that is placed into the water tank and captures all the impurities. Kiely and his team spent about 18 months researching several polymers to find the perfect combination that pollutants would attach to.

Kiely has more than 15 years’ experience in molecular microbiology and related fields and is a veteran of a Boston-area startup. He hooked up a few years ago with Jason Aspin, a marine engineer who is company co-founder, and they decided to build the business together on Prince Edward Island.

Kiely funded ClearPod on his own and the team won a grant from the New England Clean Energy Council to do tests. Aspin invested $120,000 into Regen, which received additional funding from various government programs.

Island Water Technologies is now raising a funding round worth a total of $2.5 million, including $500,000 to $2 million in equity funding.