Water Conservation Committee

Our pork production plant in Ottumwa has a renewed passion for water reduction. The facility formed a water conservation committee with the mission of making water conservation both visible and actionable throughout the facility. The committee established a water use goal, identified potential conservation projects and developed a list of action items to improve communication about water use reduction throughout the plant. The facility has successfully implemented a number of large projects, including transitioning water-cooling systems from hydraulic power packs to air-cooling systems, implementing improved sanitation practices, recycling heavy water use applications and improving operational and behavioral water conservation strategies throughout the facility. These efforts also resulted in a secondary benefit of reduced water flow through our wastewater treatment operation, which subsequently increased the efficiency of biogas recovery and reduced our wastewater treatment burden. In total, our Ottumwa facility has saved 430,000 gallons of water per day.