by Quinn Glabicki & Jamie Wiggan, PublicSource
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center. It is the second story in a three part series.
Photographs by Quinn Glabicki.
Collette Sheridan ran her fingers along the stone countertop, collecting a small heap of red particles in her palm. The skin from her wrist to her elbow was pinkish and splotchy — a condition, she said, that began with the dust that plagues the property.
She and her husband, Richard, sunk their savings into transforming their 10-acre lot into lodging for tourists and workers entering the town of Pinjarra, where Pittsburgh metal maker Alcoa has operated its largest Australian refinery since 1972.
The couple built the first nine chalets six years ago and had planned for 80 more. But the work ground to a halt when they discovered the dust was there to stay.
Since 2003, the Sheridans and their three children have battled a cocktail of symptoms: frequent nosebleeds, headaches, breathing difficulties and hair loss. They suspected the Alcoa refinery that looms behind their live-in business may be the cause of their problems, and in 2013, they began to investigate. Lab testing showed dioxins in their blood, they said, and recent urine and hair samples revealed a slew of toxic heavy metals.
When their chalets began collecting dust, they assumed it came from the 150-foot mounds of bauxite residue next door. The company said there’s no proof.
An email from an Alcoa lawyer identified the company’s residue “fingerprints” — which include the radioactive elements thorium and uranium. The Sheridans sent dust from their chalets to the lab and found high levels of both. Testing at the nearby elementary school and homes as far as 12 miles away also returned the company’s signature, raising questions about the extent to which Alcoa’s waste has encroached on surrounding communities.
Six years on, the Sheridans’ chalets have never hosted a sunseeker or a mineworker. The couple is convinced the liability is too great and the dusty rooms too inhospitable.
“We worked really hard to make this a success, and it was just taken all away from us,” said Richard Sheridan.
Alcoa has mined and refined bauxite in Western Australia since 1963. The company owns sprawling industrial facilities along the southwestern coast, including its largest, at Pinjarra; Wagerup, near the town of Yarloop; and a recently idled facility at Kwinana, a suburb of Perth.
Public health complaints surrounding Alcoa’s Kwinana and Wagerup refineries led to lawsuits, settlements and home buyouts. In Pinjarra, locals describe the physical and mental toll of the dust that blankets the town.
“The last three years is the worst I’ve seen it in a long time,” said one former contractor, Clint Smith, who worked in dust suppression for Alcoa until last April. “They’re environmental vandals.”
Like U.S. Steel is to Pittsburghers, Alcoa is familiar to the people of Pinjarra — a town of around 5,000. Grievances over red dust and concerns about deforestation are common. So are pickup trucks with workers in fluorescent jumpsuits, destined for Alcoa’s mines or the refinery up the road. Streets are named after the company and its operations. Swim teams, racetracks and galleries accept Alcoa sponsorship.
While locals are quick to point to the jobs the company has employed for generations, they are also steadfast that Alcoa’s legacy — mountains of red sludge totaling nearly 100 billion gallons — will remain far longer than the Americans do.
Those vast piles, which have grown longer and taller each year since Alcoa arrived in the ‘60s, have come under increased scrutiny. Retaining walls holding tens of billion gallons of waste reportedly failed to be certified as stable, stoking concern about the possibility of a breach.
Alcoa did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.
For now, public opposition in the country town is limited to pockets of concerned residents like the Sheridans. They argue that the historic fates of Yarloop and the idled Kwinana refinery offer a cautionary tale.
From 2008 through 2010, the sleepy hamlet of Yarloop in Western Australia inspired a book, intervention from American activist Erin Brockovich and a class-action lawsuit in Allegheny County.
At the center of it all was Alcoa’s nearby Wagerup refinery, driving heated debates about risks posed to workers and residents since opening in 1984. The plant continues to pump out 3 million tons of alumina per year, though a planned expansion was halted amid the outcry, and the Pittsburgh company claims to have taken steps to mitigate pollution.
Janine Quicke was one of the company’s first female refinery workers when she started at Wagerup in 1994. She said she worked hard to prove her value — that is, until a series of progressive health issues, starting in 1999, forced her to leave the job six years later.
Quicke was working on the top of the mills when she saw a plume of smoke waft over her. The smell hit her immediately, but she was back on the ground before the symptoms set in: headaches, nausea, dizziness, rapid heart rate.
“I’ve never felt so violently ill,” she said.
The sickness passed, but it marked the beginning of a long struggle with shifting symptoms, medical visits, mandated sick leave and ultimately a medical buyout.
It took several years after leaving the plant in 2005 for Quicke to feel she’d made a full recovery.
“I was an angry, angry person for a long time,” she said.
Left: A jet wash at Alcoa’s Wagerup refinery cleans caustic from employees’ vehicles. Right: Janine Quicke at home in Harvey, the next town south of Yarloop.
Others tried to claim redress through the courts. Nearly 250 plaintiffs — workers and residents — filed a total of five civil claims in Allegheny County court, aided by Brockovich, in 2009. The cases ended up in federal court, where a judge declined them, effectively saying the matter belonged to the Australian justice system.
Back at Wagerup, the Pittsburgh company had attempted to address the outcry by establishing a buffer zone through the middle of Yarloop and buying out the homes that fell within it. This, according to some locals, only added to the strife, as neighbors on opposite sides of the dividing line disputed the extent of the impact.
Years of attrition following the buyouts, compounded by a devastating 2016 bushfire, have left a declining community, according to one longtime resident.
“It’s not a town,” said John Harris. “I wouldn’t call it a town, there’s just nothing there.”
In Kwinana, neighborhoods that once bustled with homes and businesses around Alcoa’s oldest refinery now resemble a post-industrial wasteland.
The area was cleared in the early 2000s under a state-led initiative to promote an industrial corridor with a protective buffer zone. But planning setbacks and court rulings upended the vision.
Twenty years on, a patchwork of empty brownfields occupy a prime slice of suburban Perth, which the government said should be left uninhabited. A planned housing development was blocked by the courts in 2016 on the basis of public health risks. Last year, Alcoa shuttered its refinery, contributing a hulk of aging machinery and vast piles of residue to the area’s uncertain future.
“If they think the area is safe, why is nothing being built there?” asked Peter Horn, whose former home in Wattleup, beside Kwinana, was bought out by the government.
Peter’s son, Kane Horn, was five when a spinal tumor left him paralyzed from the waist down.
Kane, now 31, was being treated for leukemia right as public health concerns peaked around the Alcoa refinery, joining a number of former residents who say the refinery caused long-term health problems. The Horn family has always wondered whether it may have factored into his rare diagnosis.
Government data shows Kwinana and Wattleup, positioned in an industrial corridor, have some of the highest cancer rates in the region. Residents have sought for decades to get the government to examine the possible industrial causes, though no formal studies have been conducted.
“I’ve kind of just learned to live with it,” Kane Horn said. “You can’t really do much when there are big companies that don’t really care what they do.”
In early 2024, the company announced it was shuttering the Kwinana facility, citing “a long period of operating losses.”
PublicSource journalists spoke with 19 current and former Alcoa employees and contractors in March. Many described a work environment that was physically dangerous and environmentally irresponsible. Older workers pointed to a shift in workplace culture around the mid-1990s, when they say Pittsburgh began exerting more control from afar, imposing a numbers-first approach on a workforce formed by rural community values. Some added that the company paid well, affording lifestyles that would have been otherwise unattainable for blue-collar workers in small-town Australia.
Vince Puccio, a former Alcoa worker of 25 years, stood at home among the shelves of records he’s collected on the company. Puccio grew up and lived in Yarloop until his retirement. He founded Community Alliance for Positive Solutions to push for more stringent regulation of the Pittsburgh firm.
“I have no issues with any industry here, no issue with companies making a decent profit – what I have an issue with is greed, and that’s what this company is all about.”
Wayne Hyatt took a job at the Pinjarra Refinery in 2022. He lasted 10 months.
“It was just a horrible, dirty, nasty place,” he said, describing frequent caustic spills that flowed down the roadways of Alcoa’s property on the outskirts of town.
The company, he said, could not keep up with the pace of failing infrastructure, and he described co-workers who were frequently burned by caustic acid.
Left: Alcoa’s mud lakes in Pinjarra. Right: Former Alcoa workers Krista-lea Hayward and Shawn Jose, photographed in Pinjarra.
Couple Shawn Jose and Krista-lea Hayward both recently left jobs at Alcoa’s Pinjarra refinery because of poor workplace conditions — caustic “overflowing for days on end.” Protective gear was insufficient, they said, and both said they were frequently burned on the job.
“You couldn’t pay me enough to go back there,” Jose said. “It’s too dangerous.”
Left: Former Alcoa worker Dave Puzey photographed at home in Binningup. Right: Alcoa’s Wagerup refinery.
Dave Puzey started battling fatigue a few years into his 11-year stint at Alcoa. The lethargy was soon joined by coughing and debilitating chemical sensitivity, all of which gradually worsened until he was laid off during a long leave of absence from the Wagerup refinery.
Puzey, who remains a mining contractor, said he refuses to work for alumina companies after his time at Alcoa.
“It’s not just the atmosphere that’s toxic in that place … It’s the culture.”
Even as workers openly criticized Alcoa, most acknowledged the good pay that the company provided.
“Alcoa gave us a lifestyle that we never could have afforded,” said Greg Sudholz, who worked for the company for about 40 years until retiring in 2008 and now runs a small farm.
“They were a good company to work for, when you were a name, then when the Americans started putting the pressure on, we just became a number.”
In Pinjarra, the reddish mounds of waste overlooking the town grow taller each year.
Locals say perpetual dust is a daily disruptor.
Some have moved away altogether.
Just outside the buffer zone, beyond the line of trees that surrounds Alcoa’s Pinjarra mud lakes and across from Alcoa Road, a small community called Carcoola is the closest to the refinery. Originally built by the company to house employees, it is now a working-class neighborhood, complete with its own school and scores of cul-de-sacs. There, residents say the roofs are layered in red dust, rendering rain collectors unusable. The caustic, chemical odor creeps through windows, and the refinery alarm is heard from the back stoop.
“There’s a lot of people that have problems in Carcoola,” said Kathy O’Connor, who lived there with her two adopted children until last year.
She had brought the twins, Aaliyah and Jonathan, home to Carcoola from the hospital 11 years ago, and by the time they were six months old, the children had trouble breathing. Doctors never offered a diagnosis, but prescribed an inhaler and medication to open the children’s airways. Both children used an inhaler daily, and Kathy, an asthmatic, used three. The family made regular trips to the doctor when the children began to wheeze, O’Connor said.
“You can see it in the air,” Aaliyah, 11, said of the dust.
Shortly after receiving toxicology results showing elevated levels of heavy metals, the family decided to move to Mandurah, a small city near the coast. Immediately, their breathing improved. They haven’t had to go to the doctor since.
“I feel good,” Aaliyah said. “I do sports and it’s really, really easier when you can breathe,” no medications required.
Dust tests, though, conducted by the Peel Environmental Protection Alliance, a local advocacy group, found Alcoa’s dust signature at sites 12 miles from Pinjarra, nearly all the way to Mandurah and its population of nearly 100,000 people.
That has residents like O’Connor concerned.
“I won’t be there for long,” she said. “I’m going to move far away. All because of Alcoa.”
Several blocks away, Grant McKinnon recalled the caustic odor at the family’s home in Carcoola. “It’s just overwhelming,” he said. “It makes your eyes water,” forcing the family indoors several times a week behind closed windows. His two boys, Taz, 10, and Tyler, 6, have lived in Carcoola their entire lives. They underwent toxicology tests, too, which also showed elevated levels of metals.
“Of course we’re concerned,” McKinnon said. “At 10 years old, they’ve got heavy metals in them. … I mean, geez, it can’t be good, can it?”
Medical experts offer a variety of perspectives on the effects of bauxite residue and refinery emissions on workers and residents.
A group of five doctors and health experts opposing Wagerup expansion plans in 2005 wrote that Yarloop residents “have suffered acute and chronic adverse health consequences” from living near the refinery. A clinic founded by the state health department a few years prior to address public health concerns catalogued more than 70 patient visits presenting industrial health concerns.
In Pinjarra, after years of resident concerns, the state government in 2023 conducted a study assessing a potential cancer cluster, finding “no clear or consistent evidence.” The government also tested for dust levels in Pinjarra last year, concluding they did not exceed national guidelines.
Dr. Maureen Phillips, a medical practitioner based in Perth, has spent time with the Sheridans and others around Pinjarra concerned by the dust. She said she’s sympathetic to their plight.
“If I lived there and that dust was coming on to me, I would be very distressed as well,” she said.
She said she was disappointed by the results of the studies, though she has no reason to doubt their validity.
“When you look at what goes into the [refining] process, it’s a bit horrifying,” she added.
Residents, though, remain convinced that Alcoa deserves greater scrutiny and continue to press for accountability.
“I’m all for making a living and having someone here in our community that supplies so many jobs,” McKinnon said. “But they need to be held accountable for the toxins and the toxic dust and stuff like that that they’re allowing to just fly around.
“… I mean are we going to be able to sue the shit out of them when my kid gets leukemia in 10 years?”
Local governments are concerned that their communities will be permanently marred by Alcoa.
Mining, said Mike Walmsley, president of the Waroona shire, has overtaken a once-thriving farming economy and threatens a precious natural inheritance. “We’ve got to protect what we have left.”
Locally, it’s not a fringe perspective. An alliance of five municipalities at the heart of Alcoa’s operations released a position statement seeking to limit mining and its impact in their communities.
The fate of the company’s mountains of red waste is a looming anxiety.
“The residue is Alcoa’s legacy,” said Walmsley, who chairs the local alliance of governments. “We will be custodians of that legacy if and when they leave.”
If the retaining walls broke, as happened at mines in Hungary in 2010 and Brazil in 2019, Walmsley said it could cause “a catastrophic environmental disaster.”
The Fund for Investigative Journalism also contributed funding to support this project.
Jamie Wiggan is deputy editor at PublicSource and can be reached at ja***@**********ce.org.
Quinn Glabicki is the environment and climate reporter at PublicSource and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at qu***@**********ce.org and on Instagram and X @quinnglabicki.
This story was fact-checked by Matt Maielli.
Photo editing by Stephanie Strasburg.
