Demand is surging for aluminum. It’s used in everything from smartphones and computers to solar panels. The raw material to make aluminum, bauxite, is mined near the Jarrah Forest in western Australia by Pittsburgh-based Alcoa, which is looking to expand its massive operations there.
PublicSource reporters Jamie Wiggan and Quinn Glabicki recently visited the area and wrote about the impact of the mine. The three part series was supported by the Pulitzer Center. They spoke with The Allegheny Front’s Julie Grant.
LISTEN to the interview
This interview has been edited.
Julie Grant: How did you get involved with this international story?
Quinn Glabicki: Last summer, we were approached by some folks in Australia who were increasingly concerned that Alcoa’s mining was touching upon one of Earth’s rarest forests. Alcoa is, of course, headquartered in Pittsburgh. Their lease spans a majority of the northern Jarrah Forest.
Jamie Wiggan: People have been resisting at a small kind of grassroots level in Western Australia for some time and they feel that the centers of power of Alcoa are quite firmly planted here in Pittsburgh.
Grant: Can you tell us about the forest?
Glabicki: It’s a vast forest made up of an ancient ecosystem. They have grass trees, which in some cases are 700 years old. Jarrah trees that stretch a hundred meters in the air, and beneath that canopy, just a really kind of unique endemic list of species that are nowhere else.
Wiggan: It’s like being on a set for Jurassic Park or something. There’s something that feels different about being in that forest, that this is a rare ecosystem, that if it’s lost, there’s nothing else like it.
Glabicki: And really, that’s kind of the center of concern right now. The company is in the midst of requesting approval to mine more and more forest.
Grant: So according to your reports, Alcoa has two mines in rural Western Australia where it mines for the material bauxite, and it has three refineries. What do they do there? Can you tell us about their operations?
Glabicki: It’s a 24-7, 365-day a year operation. They pull bauxite out of the ground. They use explosives to blast through cap rock. And it goes on a conveyor belt that feeds the refineries, goes on to train, goes to the port, and then it’s exported.
Grant: So the Alcoa operations, according to your story, have brought some 6,000 jobs to Western Australia. This is a small rural area where jobs are needed. But you also talk about the pollution that has come with Alcoa’s operations. So what have communities near Alcoa facilities been experiencing?
Glabicki: We spent most of our time in a town of about 5,000 people called Pinjarra. It’s a rural community known for horse racing. And it really exists just next to the Alcoa refinery there. Residents complain of this red dust that seems to blanket the entire town. Seemingly everyone we talked to had something to say about this dust, and that dust, according to residents, originates from these large mud piles, mountains really, that are over 80 meters tall, and they actually, from the air, from satellite imagery, are larger than the footprint of the town itself.
[T]hat dust, according to residents, originates from these large mud piles, mountains really, that are over 80 meters tall, and they actually, from the air, from satellite imagery, are larger than the footprint of the town itself.
Wiggan: Refineries are probably the most potent sort of driver of the public health concerns around emissions and the dust. The mining is mostly the cause of the concerns about the deforestation and the ecology.
We were stopping people on the streets, we were not profiling for specific people. We were talking to workers, ex-workers. Everybody, first of all, knew who Alcoa were and the general sort of perception of this company and their local impacts was pretty consistent. And to be frank, it wasn’t a positive one.
Some of them coming from workers were more focused about the sorts of conditions that they experienced in the refineries or on the mining sites. Sometimes safety concerns, health concerns, lots of reports that these caustic solution spills happen all the time and that the remediation efforts are not sort of up to scratch. Just hazardous work sites, these kinds of reports were very familiar.
I think also this sense of what’s happening to the forest is really penetrating a little bit beyond just like a group of sort of ‘greenies’ or environmentalists and people who live there, I think, do have a sense that this is a kind of a unique and precious natural resource and that it is under threat. And I think that is cutting through as well.
Glabicki: I think all that’s to say that there’s a really long history in Australia that reflects kind of community issues with this company, whether that’s from workers and from local residents. We visited a town that had been bought out by the government after they declared it unsafe to live, and another town that was more or less divided after the company itself bought out a number of residents as well.
And so there’s been this long period of time where Alcoa has been at the center of both displacement and allegations of illness. And most recently, the destruction of a very unique ecosystem. And so I think that in this moment, as they’re pursuing renewed permits, that that cumulative history is really taking shape and forming kind of a public opinion of this.
Grant: What has the response of environmental regulators and the government been to concerns from the local community?
Wiggan: We heard from people across the board who were saying they really didn’t feel like the government was sort of doing its job as the regulator and they’re sort of the guarantor of public health and environmental protections because of this state agreement that was drafted back in the ’60s that allowed it to come here in the first place and operate for a long time that basically shielded [Alcoa] from the environmental processes.
Having said that, there does seem to be a sense that maybe some changes are coming, and the state government is now kind of requiring the company to go through a more updated regulatory process.
Grant: Some of the stories of folks in the community you wrote about sound kind of like things that we hear from people in our own region, especially those who live near heavy industry or energy development.
Glabicki: You know, it’s striking, the similarities. You know, at a certain point, all of these stories start to feel very similar: people complaining against a big corporation and with few avenues towards recourse, towards a solution.
But I think what struck us as far as being in some ways the furthest we could possibly get away from Pittsburgh was the reach that a local corporation has. And it’s not just Australia. Alcoa has operations in 11 countries around the world.
A purpose of this reporting was to share with a Pittsburgh audience, not only just what’s happening, but the extent of the influence and the impact of someone who’s headquartered on the North Shore here.
Grant: You know, we started out mentioning, and this I got from your story of how much sort of our current and future potentially are going to rely on aluminum, and what is mined and refined here in this area you’re talking about – So what can people do or do you see any kind of answer here?
Glabicki: Aluminum is a material that is one of the most recyclable materials in the world. And so to the extent that we as humanity require this material to build our future – of course, it’s in everything, it’s not just solar panels or wind turbines, it’s beer cans and laptops and smartphones – and, so, there is an opportunity to reuse the material that we already have.
I think there is an argument being made by Alcoa, and that’s not unique just to that corporation, I mean, most manufacturing companies now are making the argument that, ‘Hey, we are building the green energy future.’ But of course, there’s a trade-off and there always is, no matter what you’re talking about. I mean we know that here with steel or with natural gas production. And these are all materials and resources that we require for modern living to extent. And so that’s really a balancing act, I think, as we move forward.
