KEY POINTS:
Mervyn McDonald is lucky in comparison to others in Yarloop. He was forced to move from his much-loved hometown of 61 years, ending three generations of McDonalds there.
He has several health complaints, including tinnitus and respiratory problems, and he can't go back to the Western Australian town without suffering for days afterwards from chemical sensitivity reactions.
McDonald's luck is that, unlike many others in Yarloop, he was reasonably compensated for the sale of his house by the corporate giant he and many others believe is poisoning the town.
His house was bought by Alcoa, which owns the Wagerup Aluminium Refinery about 2km from Yarloop.
Residents tell of symptoms ranging from runny eyes, sore throats and asthma to skin rashes, muscle aches, abdominal problems, palpitations, fatigue and mental confusion. Perth doctor Moira Somers has advised some to move.
Despite continuing disputes about the safety of its facility, Alcoa was granted permission to almost double in size last year, and the company says it is on target to meet 42 conditions imposed by the State Environment Minister.
The expansion will make the Wagerup Aluminium Refinery the biggest of its kind in the world.
After striking a deal with the Western Australian Government, Alcoa is offering a relocation scheme to local residents which the Government claims "will now reflect the unaffected land values in Harvey and Waroona, rather than the lesser values in Yarloop".
But the part of the scheme involving farm purchases has stalled over differences between the valuations from Alcoa and what the landowners think their properties are worth.
Yarloop is a dying community. Residents say four out of five businesses along the Southwest Highway have closed. They have to travel 13km to get petrol as both the town's service stations have closed.
Most of the traffic going through Yarloop is Alcoa trains shifting alumina to the port and caustic soda to the refinery.
In the past six years more than a third of residents have left, leaving only 540.
Yarloop has an unusually high number of "For Sale" signs adorning fence-posts.
These houses were bought by Alcoa to create a noise boundary, then sold to new owners - who are now trying to get rid of them.
Resident Cam Auxer says "real estate agents lied to them and told them there were no health risks".
Unable to sell back to Alcoa, the owners can now only try to offload their homes in a less than receptive market.
Yet, as Auxer notes, "these people are not going to find a similar property that they can afford without going into financial hardship".
When Vince Piccio built his farm-style cottage 20 years ago, it was on a large section of land with citrus trees. Now his house is only 1.2km from the refinery. But Piccio refuses to leave his home until the dispute with Alcoa is sorted.
The presence of the refinery has slashed property values to a point where many of those left see no point in keeping their properties maintained.
Driving past, Merv McDonald sees the house that once belonged to his mother and says "she'd hate to see it looking like that".
The hospital closed in 2006 because the Health Department said it could not justify keeping it open to cater for Yarloop's shrinking population.
Auxer says the hospital has been turned into a clinic, and is used mostly for giving out needles to drug users, many of whom moved to Yarloop to take advantage of cheap rents offered by Alcoa after buying out residents.
A methamphetamine laboratory was discovered in the town in 2006.
Yarloop may suffer the same fate as Wagerup, a town long since vanished under the shadow of Alcoa's refinery.
If health department recommendations were followed, and Alcoa extended the refinery's buffer zone to 5km - the same as set for its Pinjarra refinery - it would wipe out what is left of Yarloop.
Alcoa spokeswoman Courtney Hoogen says "extensive independent studies have consistently shown the refinery is safe for employees and the surrounding community" and that employees use "a range of personal protective equipment".
Dave Puzey disagrees. He worked for the refinery for 13 years and was laid off by Alcoa when he was unable to work because of illness.
Today, he has respiratory problems and broken sleep patterns. He attributes these to prolonged inhalation of caustic soda.
"There was no breathing protection offered to us and we regularly worked in a building where the caustic soda hung in the air like a fine mist," he said.
When residents complained of ill health after 1996, their complaints coincided with the installation of a liquor burner employed to clean organic matter from the bauxite.
The burning process emitted several chemicals. In 2005, Alcoa managing director Wayne Osborn acknowledged the emissions were short-term irritants that affected "quite a number of people".
The liquor burner was switched off in 1997, but it was brought back into commission when Alcoa declared it had the technology to deal with "irritants".
In 2002 Alcoa doubled the height of the five-flue stack at the refinery to 100m. Emissions were sent higher into the atmosphere to fall, Puzey believes, less on workers and more on the town.
Chemicals coming from the stacks include arsenic, formaldehyde, mercury, beryllium, selenium, sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide.
The combined effects of this toxic cocktail are unknown.
To this, Alcoa managing director Wayne Osborn said on a TV show in 2005: "Well, many things are unknown in life."
Among refinery workers and Yarloop locals who continue to suffer from health complaints, irritation has turned to anger.
In August, their cause was boosted when Erin Brockovich came to Perth to draw attention to their plight and, as McDonald terms it, "put a cat among the pigeons".
Brockovich is working with a Queensland law firm which has taken the case on a no-win, no-fee basis.
She associates the situation in Yarloop with that in Hinkley, California where she discovered the power company Pacific Gas and Electric was responsible for poisoning the town's water supply and causing many residents to become terminally ill.
Alcoa says the "Wagerup refinery meets the most stringent health and environmental standards in the world, and will continue to do so when expanded."
In an article last year for the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Dr Michael Donoghue and Dr Mark Cullen wrote that the emissions from the Wagerup Refinery presented minimal risks of health effects, including cancer. Both doctors receive funding from Alcoa.
Dr Andrew Harper, an occupational health physician with extensive expertise in chemical injury believes the refinery is responsible for the illnesses seen in residents of Yarloop.
"I think the chemical emissions have caused their illness. There's been no indication of any other medical problems They were fully investigated medically for all other possible causes."
The Wagerup Refinery is at the foot of the Darling Escarpment. Former Greens state MP Chrissy Sharp says wind patterns generated by the scarp mean the plume is not effectively dispersed.
"These conditions allow plumes of chemical emissions from the plant to settle at or near ground level."
An Alcoa official claims that the company studied meteorological conditions in the area and found them typical of a rural environment.
Alcoa's reason for extending the the stacks was to "increase the dispersion of emissions, further lowering ground level concentrations".
Locals, workers and environmentalists question why Alcoa was allowed to expand.
Alcoa is a multibillion-dollar company seen as able to flex financial muscle with governments. In 2004 it became part-owner of the Dampier to Bunbury natural gas pipeline, the main source of gas supply for Perth and southwest industries.
As a result of the Alcoa expansion, the Western Australian government will receive A$11 million ($12.5 million) each year and A$17 billion in export revenue will be generated over the life of the refinery.
Dr Beth Schultz of the Environmental Council of Western Australia says the state government is "more interested in money than people" and "bowed to Alcoa's pressure and sweet talk".
Brockovich is a big name among many lesser-known names determined to bring to account those responsible for the deteriorating health of Yarloop and its residents.
These lesser-known names include Merv McDonald and Vince Piccio who together established the Community Alliance for Positive Solutions for which the "aim is not to shut Alcoa down - just hold it accountable for its actions".
The residents of Yarloop are taking on Goliath.
THE YARLOOP EFFECT
* Alcoa is big business. The Wagerup refinery is on target to meet environmental conditions that will see the facility expand production from 2.5 million tonnes a year to 4.7 million tonnes a year.
* Last year the company generated A$30.4 billion ($34.6 billion) in revenue from its refineries in 44 countries. Within Australia, Alcoa operates two other aluminium refineries at Kwinana and Pinjarra in Western Australia (WA).
* Alcoa's Australian refineries produce 15 per cent of the world's demand for alumina.
* The company invests over A$12 billion into the Australian economy and exports over A$4.2 billion of product each year.
* WA's heavy rainfall is ideal for aluminium production because bauxite requires two or three tonnes of water to produce one tonne of alumina. But drought and Alcoa's thirst are combining to create worries about future water supplies for the region.
* Alcoa's Kwinana Refinery has also been under public scrutiny. This refinery has Alcoa's only other liquor burning plant.
Bronwyn Bruce is a New Zealand freelance reporter based in Sydney.
