Iowa Food Processing Plant Needed Water Reduction Management Plan

Caltha LLP Project Summary

Project: Water Use Reduction Audit / Water Usage Management Program
Client: International Food Processor
Location(s): Iowa


Key Elements: Water use reduction audit, Water use process control limits, Water use management plan


Overview: This large facility wished to reduce overall water usage as a corporate initiative to reduce environmental impacts of its operations and because the facility was approaching permitted limits for wastewater discharge to the local POTW. Water was used in a wide variety of processes around the facility, and water usage inside the plant was monitored by a set of water meters collecting daily total usage at various points around the water distribution system. Project elements included:

• Developing a Water Use Map for the facility,
• Review and statistically analysis of previous five years of water meter  and daily processing throughput data,
• Identification of specific processes determined to be “out-of-control”, defined as those process areas where variations in water usage were poorly correlated to production.

Once targeted processes were identified, control limits were calculated for each process so that daily water use could be quickly evaluated by facility staff to determine if immediate corrective action(s) were needed. Using this system, incremental improvements on water use reduction were realized.


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