News 8 Austin

Currently, much of central Texas is experiencing an exceptional drought. Wells are running dry and many cities have water restrictions in place. But one man from Dripping Springs, makes his living from the rain, and despite the drought, his business is booming.
Read more...

Oak Hill Gazette

Richard Heinichen simply refused to settle for unacceptable well water. That determination lead to the birth of a full-scale rainwater collection and bottling facility in Dripping Springs – and earned him the honor of becoming the first (and only) company licensed to bottle rainwater in America.
Read more...

Custom Home

The owners of the Lake Austin remodel hired Tank Town, based in nearby Dripping Springs, Texas, to create their own rainwater-collection system. Led by founder Richard Heinichen, the company has installed hundreds of systems locally and even produces its own bottled water.
Read more...

New York Times

Ever tasted a raindrop and wondered, Why doesn't someone bottle this stuff? Well, someone has and called it, aptly, Rain Water. Rain Water, the product, comes from Dripping Springs, where it is collected and bottled by Richard Heinichen, a 57-year-old former blacksmith.
Read more...

Reader's Digest

Money may not grow on trees, but for Richard Heinichen of Dripping Springs, Texas, it does fall from the sky. Using a half-acre collection system, he gathers rain water, filters it, bottles it - and sells it for a buck a pint.
Read more...

Gourmet

The spirit of quirky Hill country enterprise is on display at nearby Tank Town, a skyline of catchment tanks in Necco Wafer hues. Here, Richard Heinichen harvests rainwater and filters it by reverse osmosis down to a ten-thousandth of a micron. Yes, it tastes good. "Made between Heaven and Earth over Dripping Springs, Texas," brag the bottles, which are sold on-site and at assorted local businesses.

Austin-American Statesman

Who among us has not stood in a soft rain shower with mouth wide open to try to catch some liquid sky? There's just something primeval about free-falling rainwater that makes us tilt our earthboud heads and await the nectar of clouds. But, unless you're a big mouth, drinking rainwater in real time means getting more rain on you than in you.
Read more...

Breathe

When threatening clouds gather over the rolling fields of Richard Heinichen's Texas Hill Country farm, the 57-year-old smiles--and with good reason. As the self-proclaimed mayor of "Tank Town," a collection of 10,000-gallon Easter-egg-colored vessels on the west side of the farm, it's Heinichen's job to catch the water that falls from the sky, which he then bottles and sells nationwide.
Read more...

American Way

The arid hills west of Austin, Texas, might seem an unlikely place to start a rainwater bottling company. But entreprenuers often take root in inhospitable soil, and this is where Richard Heinichen started bottling his "fresh-squeezed cloud juice," which he named, simply, Rainwater.
Read more...

My Business

Talking to Richard Heinichen makes you thirsty. The self-proclaimed mayor of Tank Town (www.rainwatercollection.com) is a man-made drinking water expert. Unable to tolerate the sulfur-smelling well water he found when he moved to the Texas Hill Country 13 years ago, Heinichen started collecting rainwater for use at home. After noticing the fiberglass tank he used to collect the rain, a neighbor asked him to help him install a similar system.
Read more...

Saveur

In the lush, green country outside Dripping Springs, near Austin in central Texas, lives a man who loves to catch rainwater. Six years ago, Richard Heinichen, a metal sculptor, and his wife, writer Suzy Banks, fed up with drinking from their well - which yielded, as Heinichen puts it, "rock-hard sulfur water which turned our hair into fright wigs and our blue jeans into cardboard" - decided to harvest the sky.
Read more...