Water<\/a> Corporation raised concerns throughout 2025 that new fencing Alcoa had installed around its mine sites was preventing water monitoring.<\/p>\nThe fences had shut out rangers who needed to inspect the catchment and staff were having to obtain new work, health and safety training and vehicle modifications \u201cto reinstate mine site access\u201d, the corporation wrote in February last year.<\/p>\n
Six months later, Water Corporation inspectors still had concerns and the corporation raised \u201cthe issues we are experiencing gaining site access for our rangers to conduct inspections in the catchment\u201d with Alcoa executives.<\/p>\n
The WA Forest Alliance said the limitations on access were troubling because \u201cthese inspections are critical to ensure safety of drinking water for hundreds of thousands of Western Australians\u201d.<\/p>\n
A Water Corporation spokesperson told Guardian Australia: \u201cWe have been forthright in engaging with Alcoa to remedy previous concerns over site access and to ensure data is shared in a timely and comprehensive way\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe continue to thoroughly monitor all mining activity in proximity to public drinking water catchments.\u201d<\/p>\n
In further documents released under FoI, Water Corporation said that due to a restructure of the way advice is provided to government about Alcoa they no longer received the company\u2019s mining plans.<\/p>\n
Water Corporation is on an independent technical advisory group but is not on a new strategic bauxite committee. In the released documents, Water Corporation said that change had \u201cconstrained our ability to plan risk mitigation activities\u201d.<\/p>\n
The corporation wrote that the energy and economic diversification department had stopped providing it with Alcoa\u2019s mining plans, which it said was \u201cpreventing the Water Corporation from being able to plan risk mitigation controls\u201d, and the department responsible for water and environment regulation was \u201cdeclining\u201d its offers of direct technical advice. In responses to Guardian Australia, both departments said they worked closely with other agencies, including Water Corporation.<\/p>\n
The documents said that when Water Corporation did gain access to the mining management plans, via the state health department, it found they \u201care not considered sufficient to reasonably assess the potential impacts\u201d of future mining operations on the water supply.<\/p>\n
However, in response to questions, both Water Corporation\u2019s spokesperson and the state government said the water supplier could still provide advice via the technical advisory group.<\/p>\n
\u201cWater Corporation frequently provides robust and high-quality advice to government on Alcoa\u2019s operations as a member of the Independent Technical Advisory Group,\u201d a government spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Alcoa\u2019s spokesperson said \u201cwe continue to strengthen our relationship with Water Corporation\u201d and the company had processes to \u201cenable visibility of our current and planned mining activities and Water Corporation\u2019s ability to monitor water quality\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese include data sharing, participation in the government\u2019s Independent Technical Advisory Group (ITAG) and site visits,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
Jason Fowler, senior campaigner at the WA Forest Alliance, said the WA government should \u201curgently heed the utility\u2019s advice on managing the threat to drinking water, and ensure full access to monitor Alcoa\u2019s activities\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWater Corporation are the experts on preventing contamination of drinking water dams,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they can\u2019t relay that information directly to decision makers, it\u2019s a huge concern.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Conservation groups have accused the US mining company Alcoa of blocking scrutiny of the effects of its mining…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":["post-327468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}