a central texas rainwater bottling company has managed to thrive despite the drought and expects a flood of new business thanks to a deal with whole foods market inc.marc howell, one of the founders of budabased agana rainwater and a licensed irrigator, said his business is droughtresistant and sustainable.people have been harvesting rainwater for thousands of years, and the practice is experiencing a revival in popularity because of its quality and an interest in reducing consumption of treated water, according to the texas water development board.it&rsquos also viewed as a conservation tool because it doesn&rsquot deplete the lake or aquifer, howell said.&ldquothere are only five rainwater facilities in the world including us,&rdquo howell said. to his knowledge, there are two other commercial rainwater bottling facilities in central texas &mdash texas rain and richard&rsquos rainwater &mdash while the other two facilities are in oregon and tasmania, australia, he said. pure rain is another rainwater bottler in texas, but it gets its rainwater from oregon.&ldquowe are the most innovative in our approach, the only one to use a fully biodegradable bottle, the only one to house water inside for superior quality. and we never use chlorine like some of the others,&rdquo howell said.agana collects its rainwater on the roof of its warehouse in buda, about 20 minutes south of austin, and stores the water in tanks with an ozone disinfection system inside the warehouse. it then bottles the water in recyclable and biodegradable bottles, and seals the bottles with biodegradable caps.with three cofounders &mdash howell, wendy goodwin and rick nedry &mdash and one employee wearing all the hats, the company is small, but howell expects a growth spurt soon.starting in may, whole foods market nasdaq wfm will begin to carry agana water. whole foods has opted to carry the brand in high rpet &ndash or high recycled plastic content &ndash bottles, which aligns more closely with its core values on sustainable packaging, a spokeswoman for whole foods said.agana is also trying to get into heb grocery stores, the dominate grocer in texas.the bottled rainwater can already be found in walgreens, several highend austin hotels and at independent restaurants such as tacodeli, hopdoddy burger bar and mr. natural.the founders of agana started bottling rainwater in the middle of the drought in july 2011. they started selling the bottled rainwater in august 2011 and started turning a profit five months later in january 2012.&ldquothe drought was not even a factor for us. we could be in a desert&rdquo and still be able to fill water bottles, said howell, who has more than 12 years of experience in designing rainwater harvesting collection and water treatment systems.the company is currently using 45 percent of the 150,000 square feet of rainwater collection space on the roof of the operation&rsquos warehouse, which had originally been built for an inland shrimp farm.howell said the recent rains were great and helped top off and freshen their already full tanks, but they could have turned out about 300,000 halfliter bottles a month without it.currently, three inches of rain can fill one million bottles at agana. once the collection area is expanded to full capacity, it will take less than half that &mdash 1.25 inches &mdash to generate 1 million bottles. the company is also about to expand its tanks and exterior plumbing.agana obtains its bottles from arizonabased enso bottles llc. howell would eventually like to start blowing his own recyclable and biodegradable bottles so that everything can be done inhouse.agana promotes itself as &ldquopurely responsible&rdquo and recently tied for fifth place in the noncarbonated bottle water category at the 2012 berkely springs international water tasting competition.health care, education, creative industriesrelated linksagriculture 
