Woodside sold the project to an insubstantial company to avoid a few hundred million in decommissioning costs: now it and its competitors will pay the price.
WA Premier Mark McGowan warned Alcoa to lift its game or face curtailed mining, but his successor Roger Cook slashed water supply protections after a possibly empty threat from the US miner.
Quinn Glabicki is a freelance photojournalist and writer currently covering climate change and the environment for PublicSource.
He has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Guardian
