The company was awarded a $1,857,442 grant from the Iowa Water Infrastructure Fund, Gov. Kim Reynolds announced Wednesday.

The grant will help the company pay for a reverse osmosis system that will enable it to reuse water, which will reduce the amount of water it will have to draw from the Fort Dodge municipal supply.

‘It just improves on their sustainability initiative,” said Chad Schaeffer, the city’s chief development officer. “Water conservation is an initiative that a lot of companies across the country and in Iowa are committing to.”

The proposed reverse osmosis system would pump water under high pressure through a series of plastic membranes filled with microscopic holes. The holes are so small that only water molecules can pass through them, leaving other substances behind. The system will be very similar to one installed at the city’s John W. Pray Water Facility to reduce the hardness of the water.

Water treated by the reverse osmosis system will then be reused in the CJ Bio America plant.

It is estimated that using the reverse osmosis system will reduce the plant’s water demand by about 600,000 gallons per day.

It is also estimated that the system will reduce the plant’s wastewater discharge by about 760,000 gallons per day.

Schaeffer said once the system is in operation, the city will have an additional 600,000 gallons of water a day to serve existing customers and potential future customers.

The expected reduction in water use by CJ Bio America will not hurt the finances of the city’s water system, he said.

He said the company has a “take or pay”agreement with the city in which it has agreed to pay a specified monthly minimum bill.

A call seeking comment from Luke Palmer, director of ESG (environmental, social governance) for CJ Bio America, was not returned Wednesday.

The CJ Bio America plant is west of Fort Dodge in the industrial park called Iowa’s Crossroads of Global Innovation. It produces amino acids used in feed for poultry and hogs. It also produces a liquid soil amendment. It opened in 2013.