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Water—Approach
We recognize that the consumption of fresh water from various community, industrial, and agricultural interests is an issue reaching a critical condition in many areas, and numerous companies are just now beginning to realize the need for a sustainable water management strategy that Alcoa recognized in 2000. At that time, we set long-term objectives to reduce our process water requirements.
Reducing the use of fresh water in our operations will make more available to meet the other needs of the communities in which we operate and reduce the volume of wastewater to be discharged or managed under ever-increasing regulatory requirements.
Our goal of a 60% reduction in water use by 2009 and 70% by 2010 from a base year of 2000 remains a challenge. In 2006, we achieved a modest improvement, increasing our reduction to 24%. Further reduction will require our businesses that use significant amounts of water to focus on operating practices and/or projects that will allow us to maximize the recycling of process water. This will reduce both the need to extract fresh water and water discharges to the environment, which will give us time to explore process changes that might lead to reduced water demand overall.
We continue to improve the quality of our wastewater and are striving to reduce the volume discharged. Our long-term goal is to reach zero discharge of process water by 2020. In some refineries, like those in Western Australia and Jamaica, we have achieved this goal.
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