The company has made it a policy to hire the majority of the Cerro Verde employees and contractors who are citizens of Arequipa. The only deviations from this come when unique technical workers are needed.
In addition to providing secure jobs to the community, Freeport-McMoRan built a water waste treatment plant that cleans sewage from the Chile River. The sewage waste previously flowed into the River and contaminated farms downstream. Of the 1.8 m3/s of water the plant sanitizes, 1.0 m3/s of the clean water flows back to the Chile River. Freeport McMorRan takes on the energy costs of the water sanitization. The company also constructed one of the seven dams needed to run the operation and co-financed another. This effort has helped stabilize water levels during rainy seasons.
