(L to R): Garth Moore, President – PCS Potash, PotashCorp; Jamie Fortune, A/Chief Executive Officer, Ducks Unlimited Canada; Peter Carton, Past President, Ducks Unlimited Canada and Mel Henry, Reeve of the RM of Corman Park.

Meet Mark Fracchia, our new Vice President of Safety, Health and Environment. Listen to Mark discuss his new role and hear his perspective on PotashCorp’s safety and environmental goals and performance.

On April 6 2011, in Brugges, Belguim, PCS Nitrogen Trinidad Limited was recognized globally by the International Fertilizer Industry Association ("IFA") for its excellence in Safety, Health and Environmental performance by being selected as first runner up by IFA's prestigious Green Leaf Award. PCS Nitrogen Trinidad was one of 29 contenders from countries around the world competing for the prize.

Doing our best to protect the environment isn’t something new to PotashCorp or the fertilizer industry as a whole, but making sure that people are aware of our efforts is relatively new.The fertilizer industry is now promoting a 4R Nutrient Stewardship Program that helps define fertilizer management practices a farmer should use in his or her fertility program. Farmers should apply the correct nutrient sources in the amount needed, at the appropriate time and in the proper place: right product, right rate, right time, right place (4Rs). And they should let their communities know what they’re doing.The Fertilizer Institute (TFI) and the Canadian Fertilizer Institute (CFI) are championing Best Management Practices and the 4R system. As an industry leader and the world’s largest fertilizer producer by capacity, PotashCorp wants its entire ag retailer customer base to be particularly aware of this program.The 4R system is based on the concept of matching nutrient supply with crop requirements while minimizing nutrient losses into the environment."It is crucial for our industry that the 4Rs not just become buzzwords, but instead, they become the basis for site-specific practices and decisions that improve the environmental, social and economic performance of our products," says TFI President Ford West.TFI and CFI are sponsoring a five-part series on the 4Rs, which is being published in the American Society of Agronomy’s (ASA) Crops & Soils magazine. The articles are coauthored by the International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI) and are intended to provide an in-depth look at the economic, environmental and social benefits derived as a result of implementing the 4R Nutrient Stewardship Program. To access the articles in the series, go to www.tfi.org.It is a worthwhile and important investment for our industry.

It was PotashCorp's commitment to sustainability that moved Illinois architect George Cary to suggest the company's new feed phosphates administrative center in Marseilles, IL should be a green building. Now PotashCorp has the first commercial building in LaSalle County, IL designed to meet the US Green Building Council's standards for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)."I think it's the future, not just for PotashCorp, but for the whole building industry," says Paul DeKok, PotashCorp General Manager – Feed. "It is the right thing to do to lower our environmental footprint and use the least amount of energy possible."Finished in late 2008, the new administrative center serves several purposes:

The biggest environmental accomplishment last year at PotashCorp's Aurora, North Carolina phosphate facility was what didn't happen.In 2007, the facility did not have a single regulatory permit excursion or Reportable Quantity Release.The site usually has very few regulatory excursions, but a perfect year is remarkable. "Just consider that the facility goes through more than 40,000 measurements annually to show that it's complying with regulatory rules and permits," said Ross Smith, Aurora Manager of Environmental Affairs. Most of these measurements test the facility's gyp stacks, groundwater and water conveyance sources such as pipes and ditches, which are regulated by the US National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit program."The only way to achieve this is to have total attention to detail, and a workforce that truly understands the concept of seeking no harm to the environment, every day," Smith said. "With our emphasis on discussing the facility's environmental impact, I'm sure everyone has really taken environmental compliance to heart." The Aurora facility is seeking permits from the US Army Corps of Engineers to continue mining in the area. The process has involved community input and several environmental impact studies. The Army Corps is consulting with a review team of 11 federal and state agencies and two environmental organizations."As we go through this process, we are demonstrating to the community and to local, state and federal officials that we are good stewards of the land here in Aurora," Smith said. "I think our continued attention to regulatory compliance is a great example of how all of us at PotashCorp are dedicated to environmental stewardship."

PotashCorp has developed an innovative way to deal with one portion of its potash mine waste stream.All but two of the potash mines in Saskatchewan produce a waste stream of water-insoluble material and primarily water-soluble sodium chloride salts collectively known as "fine tailings." These tailings are discarded from the mill in the form of salt brine that is 70 percent solid and 30 percent liquid. It naturally flows and cannot be successfully stacked as is done with mines' coarse tailings.Fine tailings have been stored separately in shallow engineered ponds, or cells, that take up a great deal of land and remain soft indefinitely, providing little opportunity for capping with soil and then vegetation.In 1999, PotashCorp entered into an agreement with Saskatchewan's Ministry of the Environment that allowed it to build a new fine tailings cell at its Lanigan operation, provided it did extensive research to find a more environmentally acceptable solution to fine tailings disposal by 2010.In the eight years since, the company has invested millions of dollars in research, focusing first on two alternatives.The first method involved ''washing" the fine tailings to remove all water-soluble materials (salts), leaving relatively clean solids that could be de-watered and stacked, or possibly distributed on farmland. It required exceedingly large amounts of fresh water and was determined not to be environmentally sound."So much water would be needed to wash these fine tailings that you might even find yourself drawing down underground aquifers and affecting local wells," said PotashCorp Environmental Director Mark Getzlaf.The second method, pulling the liquid out of the fine tailings by centrifuge, was also seen as environmentally and economically unfeasible because, while conserving water and land, it was energy- and chemical-intensive.All was not lost, however. Through this exhaustive research on removing brine from fine tailings, it was discovered that the liquid brine could be removed in situ, after fine tailings were in modified engineered tailings ponds that would allow free brine to drain from the fine tailings into brine storage ponds – essentially leaving the tailings high and dry.The most promising approach to future fine tailings management appears to be a method in which the tailings are pumped to a containment cell and the brine is allowed to flow freely through a permeable barrier – a porous berm constructed at the downstream end of the cell. This brine is recovered and the remaining fine tailings consolidate into a solid form similar to what can be achieved by centrifuge."This approach still needs more testing and research, but the initial results are very positive," Getzlaf said. "Not only do we have a potential solution for new fine tailings facilities, but existing facilities can be retrofitted to this new technology."The fine tailings that are left over will be solid enough to stack vertically, which conserves land, and will be more easily capped and planted when the facility is ready to be decommissioned."The ultimate fate of the fine tailings cells would be capping and revegetation. Most of the exposed surface area would be earth, which could be seeded to grass.PotashCorp is working with another potash company in the province to test this method, which may one day be the standard way of dealing with fine tailings in Saskatchewan.

In response to the ever-increasing concern over the question of climate change, PotashCorp has developed a carbon management strategy to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and its operations' carbon footprint. The plan comes in the wake of the company's commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions per tonne of production by 10 percent between 2007 and 2012.PotashCorp's ambitious vision for the future is based on three guiding principles. First, to ensure compliance with future regulations in the most effective manner; secondly, to protect the company's good sustainability reputation as it develops its strategy; and lastly, to explore opportunities for generating revenue in new regulatory frameworks.