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Sustaining our Great Lakes

The issue

A high dependency on water

ArcelorMittal has nine facilities throughout the USA and Canada that surround the Great Lakes. After iron and coal, water is the most important component in the steelmaking process. An average of 13,000 to 23,000 gallons of water may be required per ton of steel. ArcelorMittal depends on the Great Lakes to ship raw materials for its manufacturing operations and product distribution. Additionally, 37 million people, including more than 25,000 ArcelorMittal employees, live and rely on the lakes for drinking water, recreation and food sources.

Recognizing that the planet’s largest freshwater resource is in jeopardy, ArcelorMittal, as the sole corporate partner, joined the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2007, to focus on collaborative ecosystem restoration.

The response

“Sustain Our Great Lakes”, a public-private multi-stakeholder partnership

ArcelorMittal and partners work together to leverage resources and educate decision makers on the importance of the Great Lakes to the region’s economic vitality and quality of life, the needs and priorities of the ecosystem, and to identify efforts that can have the largest impact towards restoration goals. The ultimate goal of the Sustain Our Great Lakes program is to restore the ecological integrity of the Basin. This is achieved through financial grants that:

• Increase capacity and collaboration of environmental initiatives; and
• Enable NGOs to provide on-the-ground impact toward restoration goals, thereby increasing the overall health of the Great Lakes.

The results

Different projects for the same objective: biodiversity conservation

This bi-national effort represents a public-private partnership model where grants are leveraged two to one. Since the program’s inception in 2006, the partnership has facilitated 103 grants equaling approximately $29 million USD in conservation investment ($12.1 million cash funded by the partnership, $16.9 million provided in matching funds) across the Great Lakes. The program supports the implementation of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and is designed to protect, maintain and restore the chemical, biological and physical integrity of the asin’s ecosystem. In the long term, ArcelorMittal’s involvement in these conservation projects demonstrate the company’s responsibility, and consequently strengthen its license to operate in the Great Lakes region. For additional information on this case please refer to the site www.sustainourgreatlakes.org