Coal, Climate Change and Community: The Case of Ffos-y-Fran

the welsh agenda issue 71 | 19
mine operators were legally obliged to deposit reclamation
funds. Despite this, in 2014 the Welsh Government’s own
investigation found that just £15m had been deposited,
warning that this sum fell ‘well short of a worst case
restoration cost which could be in excess of £50m’.
Nearly ten years on from that report, the local council
revealed that the escrow account balance still stands at
£15m. All the while, estimated costs for restoration have
grown. In their application for an extension, the mine
owner admitted they had not set aside enough money
to fund the restoration work, requesting more time to
mine in order to fund the restoration. If not permitted,
they warned the restoration bill would fall on the
council. This put the local council in a difficult position
– knowing they had to reject the extension while also
aware they cannot complete the restoration relying
solely on limited budgets, and would require financial
support. However, local campaigners, along with Coal
Action Network, argue the local authority and Welsh
government should have known this day would come.
And Ffos-y-Fran is not an isolated example. Littered
across the landscape of south Wales are a number of
abandoned opencast mines. Gigantic holes of scorched
earth, full of harmful mining waste materials left to
pollute the local environment. Once a mining company
has extracted all of their potential profits and taken their
last piece of coal no more profit can be made by continuing
operations. Companies have endlessly relied on planning
extensions to continue mining in order to raise restoration
funds until either the coal runs out, or extensions are
denied. For owners, holding up their end of the bargain
and restoring the land eats away at profits. So they
liquidate, syphon off assets and avoid restoration costs by
exploiting legal loopholes or declaring bankruptcy.
Infamously, Celtic Energy Ltd owned a number of
opencasts across Wales and transferred land ownership,
along with restoration obligations, to a shell company
they had set up. They walked away with profits while
their sites East Pit, Margam, Selar and Nant Helen were
given a sub-standard partial restoration, leaving them at
a serious risk to the local environment and residents. As
Alyson Austin explains, Merthyr Tydfil County Borough
Council were aware of the likelihood of this occurring at
Ffos-y-Fran and were even warned at the very beginning.
‘They should have seen this coming, it’s standard practice
isn’t it… they mine, they leave the hole, then they go onto
the next extension then to pay for that’.
The Good Law Project investigation recently found
that Merthyr (South Wales) Ltd have chosen to pay out
£49.89m in dividends and royalties, while the restoration
fund faces a shortfall of at least £50m. Furthermore,
they also discovered that the parent company, Gwent
Holdings Ltd, which is controlled by the same family
who own Ffos-y-Fran reported cash holdings of £81.7m
in March this year. Despite this, the mine operators insist
they have ‘insufficient funds’ to pay for a full restoration
and are reported to be in negotiations with Merthyr Tydfil
County Borough Council for a reduced restoration cost.
Given the harmful legacy of opencast mining in
South Wales, Coal Action Network argue it is time to
call an end to opencast mining in Wales, once and for
all. With the recent refusal of Carmarthenshire County
Council to extend the Glan Lash opencast, Ffos-y-Fran
now remains the last active opencast coal mine in Wales.
The timeline of events surrounding Glan Lash were a
familiar tale. While mining was set to cease in 2016, with
a complete restoration by 2017, the opencast remains
derelict and unrestored. The owners Bryn Bach Coal
Ltd had applied for an extension to continue mining in
order to fund their restoration duties. Nevertheless, in
spite of this Councillors voted unanimously to reject
the extension citing concerns regarding the local impact
of dust pollution on communities and protection of
local ecosystems. While only time will tell if the full
restoration promised will go ahead at both Glan Lash and
Ffos-y-Fran opencast mines, the information available
provides a bleak forecast. The problem doesn’t only lie
in our gaping, polluted, abandoned opencasts, it is far
bigger than that. The issue of Wales’ polluted past that
continues to plague us is evident also in the hundreds of
high risk coal tips that sit above our villages and homes.
It is time to think seriously about the scale and
urgency of this challenge. In tackling climate change,
we need to look forwards – to a green energy revolution
– but there is a need too to look back at our industrial
past, and to clean up our communities. Repairing the
environmental damage and making them safe for today
and for future generations needs to be an urgent focus –
because at the most fundamental level, our communities
deserve to be safe and to enjoy a clean, green future that
starts at home.
Lydia Godden is Economic Policy
and Research Officer at the IWA