Will ministers stand by Alcoa or experts after bombshell revelations?

Mining company threatens city drinking water supply.

It’s a headline that might come out of the 1980s in the developing world somewhere – think Ok Tedi.

It’s not what anyone expects to read in Western Australia, the world’s leading mining jurisdiction, in 2023.

Serpentine Dam and Alcoa mining nearby. Credit: Google Earth

The moment feels existential for Alcoa, the Aluminium Company of America, founded in Pittsburgh in 1888 but whose global operations in bauxite, alumina refining and aluminium manufacture have their heart in the south west corner of Australia.

Seventy-five per cent of Alcoa’s bauxite and 71 per cent of its alumina come from the unique WA jarrah forests and energy-hungry refineries.

Alcoa has been strip mining in the forests east and south of Perth since the 1960s under an old-style state agreement; by the turn of the millennium they had largely convinced a public with greening sensibilities they were global leaders in mining rehabilitation.

I remember a trip to an Alcoa mine site in my high school days – environmental scientists explained how they were doing pioneering work in restoring ecologies to their pristine state after the bulldozers went through.

Presumably a generation of schoolkids was similarly “educated”.

In 1990, Alcoa was the first mining company to be recognised by the United Nations for “rehabilitation excellence”.

In 2003, it received a global award for its “outstanding contribution to the field of ecological restoration”.

Now all of that is very much in doubt.

One of the world’s leaders in plant ecology and rehabilitation, Curtin University’s Kingsley Dixon, was once supportive of Alcoa’s rehabilitation program for the world’s only jarrah forest.

“I’m quoted back in the 1990s saying, ‘regrettable as bauxite mining is, we’ve got the best company doing it’,” he told The Australian last year.

“We were working with Alcoa researching seed dormancy. We went to their mine sites and the footprint seemed small. There was a wonderful research team that we were fully engaged with. We thought at the time that the jarrah forest was inexhaustible, and that nature was boundlessly resilient. All was patently untrue and we had no idea that the company was aiming to double their annual clearing.”

Now the alarm is being sounded at the highest levels of the McGowan government, among the most pro-mining administrations in any Australian jurisdiction in contemporary history.

Modern sophisticated mining operations – and Alcoa is plainly one of those – rest upon the concept of a social licence to operate.

The most infamous recent example of what happens when that social licence is lost happened at Rio Tinto, with its catastrophic destruction of the Juukan Gorge with all its cultural significance to traditional owners.

The slow-burn controversy ultimately saw the company’s global CEO, iron ore chief, and head of corporate affairs lose their jobs.

Last month, WAtoday reported how Alcoa’s chief executive Roy Harvey told US investors that approvals to continue mining in WA would be delayed, costing the company about $240 million.

“The state government and WA public have high expectations that Alcoa meets its environmental obligations.”

WA Water Minister Simone McGurk

“Because of how critical Western Australia is to Alcoa … we thought it would make sense from a risk mitigation standpoint really just to step back, give ourselves a little bit of extra time,” he told Wall Street analysts.

“Everything is lined up, we have the right people working on it, and I think we have the support of our host government.”

Those comments take on an entirely new light given Wednesday’s bombshell revelations and the extent of that government support will be publicly tested.

Do State Development Minister (and Deputy Premier) Roger Cook, Environment Minister Reece Whitby and Water Minister Simone McGurk stand by Alcoa, or by the advice of their own departmental experts?

None of the ministers made themselves available to talk on Wednesday, but they – and Premier Mark McGowan – will be grilled about the threats to WA’s largest dam, responsible for 18 per cent of Perth’s urban water supply, at the first opportunity by media.

“The state government and WA public have high expectations that Alcoa meets its environmental obligations,” McGurk said yesterday in a statement.

“The premier and senior ministers have met with Alcoa and made clear to the company that these risks need to be appropriately managed.”

Given the stakes if they get this wrong, you would expect Alcoa – and the government – will be treading extremely cautiously from here.

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