Communities, Health & Safety, Employees and Environment. ATCO is pleased to report marked improvement in each of these areas. Highlights of the report include:
• Safety Performance: ATCO's lost-time injury rate declined 44 per cent. Several of ATCO's facilities did not incur a single lost-time injury during this period.
• The ATCO Advantage for Employees: ATCO's strength is its diversity. With nine principal operating subsidiaries, employees are offered a broad spectrum of experiences.
• Environmentally Friendly Buildings: ATCO Gas opened two new environmentally friendly operations centres and completed construction of a third, including the North Edmonton Operations Centre NEOC. NEOC is the largest commercial building in Canada to make use of geothermal heating and cooling technology fuelled by natural gas.
• Public Consultation: ATCO is committed to substantial and meaningful consultation for communities and landowners on all major projects, facilities and services.
• Community Participation: Through ATCO EPIC Employees Participating in Communities, ATCO and its employees donated $3.0 million to more than 500 charities across Alberta in 2010.
• Increased Disclosure: Our reports are based on Global Reporting Initiative's Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. This year's report has 55 per cent more performance indicators compared to the previous report.
ATCO Group's 2010 Corporate Sustainability Report is available online at www.atco.com.
ATCO Group, with more than 8,000 employees and assets of approximately $12 billion, delivers service excellence and innovative business solutions worldwide with leading companies engaged in Utilities pipelines, natural gas and electricity transmission and distribution, Energy power generation, natural gas gathering, processing, storage and liquids extraction, Structures & Logistics manufacturing, logistics and noise abatement and Technologies business systems solutions.
Certain statements contained in this news release may constitute forward-looking information. Forward-looking information is often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "plan", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "intend", "should", and similar expressions. Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking information. The Corporation believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable, but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct and such forward-looking information should not be unduly relied upon. Any forward-looking information contained in this news release represents the Corporation's expectations as of the date hereof, and is subject to change after such date. The Corporation disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities legislation.