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Water—Programs & Actions
2008 Actions
Key actions to reduce our water usage in 2008 included the following:
- Detailed a strategy for reducing water use in Australia that involves using secondary sources of water for production, reducing evaporation losses for stored water, and exploring production technologies that require less water;
- Completed a closed-loop ingot water system at our Fusina plant in Italy, reducing water consumption there by nearly 90%;
- Initiated a conversion to a dry-ash handling system at our power plant in Evansville, Indiana (USA), that will reduce annual water consumption by 5 million cubic meters (1.3 billion gallons). This work should be completed in 2009; and
- Initiated design of a recirculation system for the air compressor cooling system at our smelter in Ferndale, Washington (USA) that will reduce annual water use by 75%.
As funding for projects in 2009 will be limited, we will use this year to further refine our prioritized list of actions, provide detailed design for some innovative concepts, and explore some strategic partnerships to improve the effectiveness of actions we will take in subsequent years.
Industry Collaboration
Alcoa is an active participant in the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s efforts on best practice sharing, technology sharing, and getting member companies focused on charting a worldwide sustainable water course. Specific focus areas include:
- Having each company identify strategic water risks/opportunities;
- Establishing a common understanding of the challenges facing businesses; and
- Enabling constructive engagement with wider stakeholders through business participation, a shared understanding, and a common language.
This business collaboration is aimed at addressing some of today’s water challenges:
- Rapidly rising demand due to many uses, more users, and expanding urban footprints;
- Tightening of more complex supply-demand balances;
- Increasing water stress and declining water quality; and
- Reduced water security for more people, markets, and countries that is exacerbated by concerns regarding food, energy, and climate change.
The world’s water management challenge is everyone’s business. This requires more than technology and financing; it requires new mindsets and tools, more cooperation, and the alignment of networked governance capacities that anticipate the wider and evolving environmental situation.
Technology
For the past six years, Alcoa has focused on the development, evaluation, and deployment of innovative and low-cost sustainable water management technologies and approaches. Such approaches focus on moving completely away from the conventional and more costly end-of-pipe water treatment technologies.
In addition to looking at production process changes to reduce the need for water, we are also focused on the use of significantly lower cost natural-type system approaches for both water reduction and treatment. Such approaches, which could cost up to 75% less than conventional technologies, include green roofs, water irrigation onto fields of grass and trees, engineered wetlands, and the use of various media for filtration of water contaminants, known as natural media filtration.
Strategic Water Management Study
To implement new water technology at a location, we first establish a detailed water budget for the entire operation and surrounding plant property. Detailed mapping of inputs, flow paths, outputs with volumes and quality designations are produced. From this study, the facility planning staff can isolate and prioritize conservation opportunities to act on those easiest to achieve.
Such opportunities cover the following areas:
- Minimization of stormwater runoff;
- Natural treatment systems to collect and treat stormwater runoff for process water reuse;
- Innovative cooling water treatment recycling and reuse; and
- Process water use and discharge reduction focused on eventual elimination.
Case Studies
Tapping into Nature to Reach Zero Process Wastewater Discharge
Harnessing Nature to Treat Discharge Waters
Process Changes Result in 85% Reduction in Water Usage, Discharge
Coming to the Rescue of Australia's Rivers
Australian Operations Reducing the Flow of Water Consumption
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