WA premier ‘disappointed’ in Alcoa after forest-clearing fine but backs exemption to keep mining

West Australian Premier Roger Cook says he is disappointed with Alcoa’s environmental record, but backed a decision by Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt to allow the company to keep mining the state’s jarrah forests.

Alcoa was fined $55 million and will be forced to embark on a range of rehabilitation activities after the Commonwealth found it had been illegally clearing areas of the northern jarrah forest to mine bauxite for six years.

“I think we’ve been disappointed with the performance of Alcoa when it comes to protecting the environment and rehabilitating the environment,” Cook told ABC Radio on Thursday morning.

“That’s why we’ve done a bunch of work with them, around bringing them into a modern and contemporary environmental protection arrangement.

“I grew up in Perth, I remember as a school student going to see their operations. It’s always very confronting when you see people operating in a jarrah forest environment.

“Because of that, I think for many years, Alcoa has had a fairly negative reputation with respect to that, but fair enough, and the way that they can improve their social license is to improve their performance in relation to rehabilitation and environmental protection.”

The $55 million fine is an unprecedented amount and will see the US-based miner avoid prosecution.

Despite agreeing to pay the fine and undertake activities including expanding conservation programs for species, including WA’s three black cockatoos, Alcoa maintains it did not need federal environmental approval for the clearing.

Alcoa is now subject to an 18-month strategic assessment of its Perth operations with a view to reaching an agreement between federal regulators and the company to determine the future of its mining until 2045.

As part of that, it received an exemption from Watt to continue mining for 18 months, which the company will limit to 800 hectares per year.

“We are committed to responsible operations and welcome this important step in transitioning our approvals to a contemporary assessment process that provides increased certainty for our operations and our people into the future,” Alcoa President and chief executive William F. Oplinger said this week.

Cook said he understood why the exemption was granted, particularly with a critical mineral partnership around bauxite mining by-product gallium inked with the US government late last year.

“It’s a very important strategic critical mineral. It’s one that our partners in Japan are looking very closely at because they need to make sure that they can secure the supply chain that they need around these sort of really important, strategic rare earths and critical minerals,” he said.

Watt told ABC on Wednesday that, while he would have preferred the clearing did not occur, the fine was about 10 times more than any previous fine.

“We can’t, unfortunately, undo the past, but we can force Alcoa to pay an unprecedented amount of money for having done that and what we can do moving forward is make sure that the approvals that are required for this kind of work do happen, that’s what we’ve now put in place a path for,” he said.

Watt said the minister could end Alcoa’s operations, but that would put its 6000 employees out of work and deprive Australia and the world of alumina and gallium.

Chamber of Minerals and Energy WA chief executive Aaron Morey said the exemption to continue mining was a sensible outcome that protected jobs and the supply of alumina.

“Global demand for aluminium is accelerating, driven by its essential role in electric vehicles, renewable energy systems and modern electricity networks — making reliable domestic production a matter of national economic and strategic importance,” he said.

“Alcoa’s plans to recover gallium — a critical mineral used in semiconductors, defence technologies and advanced electronics — would further strengthen Australia’s role diversifying and securing global supply chains.”

Liberal Kalamunda MP Adam Hort said Perth hills residents were concerned with the conduct they had seen from Alcoa.

“I’m hoping that they can re-establish that trust that they need to have in the community,” he said.

However, Conservation Council WA executive director Matt Roberts said Alcoa could not be trusted when it came to its 60-year history of mining in the northern jarrah forest.

“The federal government should be working with the state government on an exit policy for this company and other bauxite miners from our South West forests, with a plan to transition workers into other industries,” he said.

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