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Alcoa boosts research amid concerns ‘extensive knowledge gaps’ threaten Perth’s water supply
By Peter Milne
Bauxite miner Alcoa will spend $15 million boosting research of the jarrah forest it mines, mostly in catchments vital to supplying water to Perth and WA’s south-west.
Last year, state-owned Water Corporation struggled to properly assess the risks to its dams from Alcoa’s forest clearing as it was hampered by “extensive knowledge gaps and multiple overlapping areas of uncertainty”, according to an August 2023 report obtained through a freedom of information request.
Alcoa has mined WA’s jarrah forest for 61 years.Credit: Alcoa
Alcoa’s funding will support a forest research centre for five years to look into caring for water as well as returning animals and diverse vegetation to mined areas, forest conservation beyond mining, and embracing Indigenous cultural values.
The US company will also boost its own team of environmental researchers from four to eleven.
In recent years, Alcoa’s mining has moved closer to Serpentine Dam, which supplies almost one-fifth of Perth’s water, and the extent of cleared areas has grown as mining outpaced revegetation.
Runoff of soil from these areas into the dam after heavy rainfall could make the water unusable either by contamination from oil or toxic forever chemical PFAS spilt by Alcoa, or by the soil making the water cloudy which renders existing water treatment plants ineffective.
The Water Corporation report noted that Alcoa’s mining has currently impacted nine of its 15 major water catchments.
“Treatment for all dams where mining activities have impacted drinking water catchments would likely be in the order of $2.6 billion, representing a 100 per cent increase in the cost of water to customers,” the report said.
Water Corporation’s concerns included a lack of data on groundwater and the cloudiness of the water before mining, untested methods used by Alcoa to reduce the risks, how rehabilitation affected water flow to the dam and how the replanted areas would change the behaviour of bushfires.
Alcoa’s acting head of Australian operations Tanya Simmonds said the research centre would build on decades of research that had won the company several accolades for its excellence in environmental management.
“We aim not only to expand understanding of the forest, but contribute to improving overall forest health, as well as facilitating wide-reaching application of the science across all manner of land uses and forest management globally,” she said.
Simmonds said Alcoa’s in-house environmental researchers successes over 50 years included significant advances towards better rehabilitation and water management.
In 2023, this masthead revealed that after six decades of mining the jarrah forest Alcoa had not rehabilitated a single hectare sufficiently well enough to meet its own completion criteria.
Curtin University professor Kingsley Dixon, an expert in minesite rehabilitation, supported the research centre if there was “no more clearing and the role of the centre was to support the repair of 280 square kilometres of underperforming rehabilitation”.
“The point is that Alcoa needs bauxite and jarrah needs bauxite,” he said.
WA Forest Alliance senior campaigner Jason Fowler said the rehabilitation failure and extensive knowledge gaps had left enormous damage to the northern jarrah forest and put Perth’s drinking water supply at grave risk.
“After 61 years of Alcoa bulldozing jarrah forests, it’s a slap in the face for Western Australians to now announce some funding for forest research,” he said.
Alcoa chief executive Bill Oplinger on Tuesday said the company intended to continue to operate in Australia in the long term.
“For the past 60 years, Alcoa has been a responsible, long-term investor and operator in Australian bauxite mining and alumina processing, as well as aluminium smelting,” he said.
Alcoa is in the process of taking over ASX-listed Alumina Limited that owns 40 per cent of a joint venture that controls the Alcoa mines and refineries in WA and an equity stake in the Portland aluminium smelter in WA.
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