Alcoa's Pt Henry plant (Moolap) was built in the mid '60s and...

Alcoa's Pt Henry plant (Moolap) was built in the mid '60s and until recent years has been able to bury their waste on their land nearby. Even though the soil is sandy and porous, the water table is high it is 3 km from Geelong and waste is located less the 500m from Corio Bay and Port Phillip Bay. Have alook at the Google map of the area.
Portland plant ( some 300km from Geelong in the middle of nowhere with a deep sea port) was built in the mid '80s, however environmental laws had tightened, they were never allowed to bury their waste, so here Alcoa were forced to build thier own recycling plant with very limited success. The waste Al2O3 being mainly recycled into road making materials. It is widly known at Alcoa that it has huge problems worldwide aspecially as they are heavily involved in the recycliing process and their huge power subsidies run out in a couple of years.
That and the well known fact that recycling uses 95% less power than primary production.
take a look at
http://www.ohiolandfills.org/?page_id=34
and you will realise why Ben is getting such a huge reception in the States.