Dow is taking proactive steps to address water stress in the Mississippi Watershed. This project aims to mitigate flood risks and improve water quality for downstream manufacturing sites by restoring wetlands, which provide floodwater storage, filter excess nutrients, and are crucial wildlife habitats in the Lower Mississippi River floodplain.
Company Name: Dow Inc.
Project Name: Investing in resilient watersheds: Loch Leven
Industry: Chemical Manufacturing
Project Location: Wilkinson County, Mississippi, USA
Project Partners: The Nature Conservancy (TNC); Ecolab; the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Caterpillar; National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
Dow is reconnecting flood plains to the Mississippi River by installing improved water control structures to increase water supply to 4,500 acres of wetlands. As a founding member of the CEO Water Mandate’s Water Resilience Coalition (WRC) under the U.N. Global Compact, companies like Dow are investing beyond their own operations and working collaboratively to enhance water stewardship management at the local watershed level.
The Mississippi Watershed has been identified by Dow’s water stress analysis recognizing both acute and chronic risks, and Loch Leven was identified as one opportunity to mitigate the risk of water stress. Two of Dow’s largest manufacturing sites sit downstream from Loch Leven and are dependent on the Mississippi River for water withdrawal and impacted by water quality during droughts and peak flow during floods.
The main goal of the project is to provide floodwater storage and improve water quality, both critical to watershed management. The project is innovative in applying a nature-based solution that addresses climate resilience while enhancing biodiversity, demonstrating the “Safeguarding and Enhancing” Principle for Corporate Climate Resilience Leadership.
Rivers like the Mississippi are critical corridors that connect cities and natural ecosystems alike. As climate precipitation patterns change, water levels vary widely between extreme lows and highs. Water quality is also impacted as saltwater slowly moves upriver having extraordinary effects on people and nature. By holding water and slowly releasing it, the wetlands on Loch Leven remove excess fertilizer runoff from upstream sources. Those nutrients, in turn, help the wetlands and all their inhabitants thrive.
Recognizing the important role of collective action, Dow works with organizations like The Nature Conservancy to bring a multi-stakeholder scientific approach to projects. Investing in nature-based solutions like the Loch Leven project is one way to reduce nutrient runoff, restore biodiversity, and enhance communities’ ability to adapt to climate change.
As our climate system makes weather events more variable, extreme, and uncertain, the stability that nature provides becomes even more crucial. Floodplain restoration projects such as Loch Leven also provide hydrologic stability, by slowing water down, holding it, and then slowly releasing it. This project, part of a larger effort by The Nature Conservancy to restore over 10,000 acres of wetland, aims to reconnect flood plains to the Mississippi River by installing improved water control structures, increasing water supply to 4,500 acres of wetlands.
The main challenge faced by the project was to manage the interaction between 28 man-made water control structures required to reconnect the floodplain with the intent that nature would rebound. By bringing together public grant money and private investment, it has reached the scale needed to improve water quality and habitat, and to remove greenhouse gases, all of which can be accomplished through rehabilitating wetlands.
The first phase of the project connected the river to the wetlands connected the river to the wetlands. Dow’s participation in the second phase helped reconnect the internal water flow within those wetlands through the provision of funding, and a technical review of the project to ensure the inclusion of ecosystem services quantification. The Loch Leven project uses the Ecosystem Services Identification & Inventory Tool (ESII), a tool developed with TNC to value nature. ESII calculates the key ecosystem service benefits of the wetlands, including flooding protection, water quality improvements and carbon sequestration.
Since its implementation in 2023, this partnership has successfully deployed the necessary resources to work at the speed required to meet these threats in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Since the work was completed, the bottomland hardwood forested wetlands that once dominated the Lower Mississippi River floodplain are returning to the landscape, providing crucial wildlife habitat. Scientists have documented 28 species of freshwater fish using the area for spawning. Waterfowl and wading birds are abundant, and the hardwood forest is thriving. The project is cleaning the water, which flows slowly through the floodplain and deposits sediment there, helping to reduce the nutrient load that causes low oxygen levels in the Gulf of Mexico each year. Additionally, the Loch Leven project will help provide 72,000 acre-feet of flood storage capacity to local communities in Louisiana.
The success of this project builds on Dow’s continued strategic approach to solving complex climate, water and nature challenges. Shared challenges between Dow and key local stakeholders include extreme weather events such as hurricanes and tropical storms, flooding, subsidence, and the loss of wetlands acting as buffers and native species. It also leverages Dow’s technological innovation including multi-functional nature-based solutions that provide co-benefits. Through Dow’s nature goal, we have made the business case for nature. The project is an example of Dow’s holistic, next-generation Water & Nature strategy designed to support water resilience for our sites and their surrounding communities, conserve habitat in key ecosystems, and positively impact nature across the supply chain as we continue to drive business growth.