Alcoa of Australia Pty Ltd has been operating the Wagerup Refinery (Stage 1) near Waroona (100 km south of Perth) since 1984, under the Alumina Refinery (Wagerup) Agreement and Acts Amendment No 15 of 1978. This agreement covers a production capacity up to 2 mtpa (million tonnes per annum).
Initially the refinery produced about 670,000 tpa, but fine tuning of the plant (currently under way) is expected to lift its capacity to 840,000 tpa of alumina.
The expansion proposal referred to in this report is to increase the production of the refinery to a capacity of 1.5 mtpa by the construction and operation of a new process line.
Although the original1978 Environmental Review and Management Programme and Environmental Protection Authority Assessment (DCE Bulletin Number 50) planned and gave approval for a capacity of up to 2 mtpa, a formal review was nevertheless sought. lt was considered necessary because of the considerable elapsed time (nearly 12 years) since the original assessment, during which period earlier concepts and values have changed. The level of assessment set was formal Consultative Environmental Review. (CER). The purpose of the CER prepared by Alcoa is to outline the significant changes in the scope of the project in relation to predicted impacts and changes to environmental management programmes and to compare Alcoa's performance against the commitments made in the 1978 Environmental Management and Review Programme.
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