Locals witnessed coal being loaded onto trucks at the site. “A can’t-miss event, right off the main road. From day one, the city council had the legal right to take action against them, but they chose not to,” Austin said.
In fact, the Coal Authority figures show production of 102,505 tonnes from October to December, compared with an average of 150,101 tonnes from January to June, when planning permits were still in effect.
The council acknowledged it knew about the mine’s activity since the license expired, but believed the mine operator’s claim in an email from its chief planning officer, David Cross, last August that the need for such a project was needed. work to clear landslides ecologist.
After CAN brought the Coal Authority data to the council’s attention, the council said it would decide whether to take enforcement action once the planning commission had decided on the planning application.
MPs raised the issue at planning meetings. Cross responded that internal meetings would discuss implementation options, but did not provide any timeline for that.
A spokesman for Merthyr Tydfil Council said: “Council is currently reviewing appropriate enforcement action. We are open to any discussions with the mine operator on a revised site restoration strategy given the insufficient funding reported in the planning application. “
Campaigners are dismayed that an extra eight months of coal mining since planning permission expired has effectively extended Mercer’s operations in South Wales by eight months. Therkelson said activists will carefully scrutinize the commission’s enforcement and consider legal action if action is not followed quickly.
broken promise
The Commission estimated the cost of remediation of the mine at £7.5-125 million. Merthyr (South Wales) Ltd publicly admitted it did not have sufficient funds to restore the site.
The company is legally obliged to pay a fund managed by the council, known as an escrow account, which will pay for restoring the site if the company defaults. The current value of the fund is £15 million.
Its planning application states: “As the council is fully aware, there is insufficient funding in the Trusteeship and Restoration Fund to fully and successfully implement the current restoration strategy for the site.”
Local campaigner and resident Chris Austin, from the United Valley Action Group (UVAG), said: “The £15m is probably just going to go around it, and some fencing and some signage.”
Councilor Kevin Gibbs told the planning committee meeting that the council was genuinely concerned that the site would become a hole in the ground, noting that the company has had 16 years to set aside money for the restoration.
Locals are extremely skeptical that any restoration will be done at the mine. Austin points out the irony that the operator has been insisting that the mine is not called that, but the “Ffos Y Fran Land Reclamation Scheme”. The name appears on all official documents, as well as on the logo on the website.
“Every time we say it’s a surface coal mine, they’re jumping up and down, pointing at us, yelling it’s not a surface coal mine, it’s ‘land reclamation’.” There will be utilities, there will be houses, there will be this , there will be that – but what we’re going to inherit is a big hole in the ground,” he said.
precedent
Fear has precedent. The restoration of several opencast coal mines in Wales and Scotland has been downgraded or left unfinished because coal mining companies have failed to provide adequate funding.
The root of the problem is the way John Major’s Conservative government has encouraged the nationalization of coal mines, with private companies exempt from paying recovery funds for 10 years in exchange for paying a higher upfront price for the mines.Mining companies are said to be starting to rely on revenue from mining expansions to pay for restoration of old mines a report Via CAN.
Several companies declared bankruptcy, leaving mines unrecovered, including Dynant Fach Colliery Company, Scottish Coal Ltd and HM Project Developments. Others exploit legal loopholes to avoid remediation costs — one such case Saw the Serious Fraud Office taking mining operator Celtic Energy to court for evading the recovery of the Neath Port Talbot East Pit by setting up a shell company in the British Virgin Islands that did not own any assets. However, the judge ruled that the actions, while dishonest, were not illegal.
In the case of Ffos-y-Fran, mining companies have a track record of trying to avoid paying for remediation. In 2018, Merthyr Tydfil Council had to take over the company – then known as Blackstone – court Failure to make payments to escrow accounts following corporate reorganization.
no compensation
The planning officer’s report noted that the application to extend mine operations did not detail Merthyr South Wales’ finances, namely how much money had been set aside for recovery, in addition to the £15m in escrow accounts.
The company also said it did not plan to replenish escrow accounts as part of its planning application, but had offered to pay £1 for every tonne of coal withdrawn from the community fund, according to the council. However, officials have calculated that of the nearly 200,000 tonnes of coal mined since planning permission expired, only 40,000 tonnes remained in the ground. It concluded that such a small amount of money cannot compensate for the negative impact of mining.
Therkelson noted that the original application was rejected by the local council, but the Welsh Government (then the Welsh National Assembly) overruled the decision, mainly because the benefits of restoring the site would compensate for the damage caused by coal mining.
He said if the mining company failed to restore the site, it was the Welsh Government’s duty to step in with the commission and provide the funds to cover the costs. He said mine workers should receive a universal basic income to help them transition to a more sustainable industry.
Coal has been trading at windfall prices since late 2021, reaching an all-time high of £378 a tonne, compared with around £45 a tonne during and before the pandemic, Austin noted. That would have allowed the company to recoup much of the revenue lost during the COVID-19 restrictions, he said.
destiny
The decision on Ffos-y-fran is not the end of coal mining in Wales. Two other decisions are still pending that could determine the fate of one of the country’s most famous exports.
In March, the High Court in Cardiff heard a judicial review against the expansion of the Aberpergwm Deep Pit mine, south of the Brecon Beacons National Park, which would allow it to extract around 40 million tonnes of coal.
The Coal Authority has granted licenses to extract additional coal in January 2022. CAN’s barristers argued the Welsh government had the power to overturn the decision, but the Welsh government said it had limited hands because the decision to proceed with extraction was made before it had that power.
Meanwhile, the operator of Glan Lash in Carmarthenshire, the last of three remaining coal mines still operating in Wales, has applied for permission to expand the mine by almost 7 hectares and extract a further 95,038 tonnes of coal – more than the law allows The number of more existing licenses. The commission is expected to decide on the application this summer, after a delay of several months after it asked operators to provide more information.
The recovery of the mine site is another problem. Original planning permission said restoration work should be completed by the end of 2017, but operator Bryn Bach Coal applied for permission to extend the deadline.
Its planning application for the expansion states that it will be able to fully restore the existing site and new parts of the mine, subject to approval for the expansion.
Haf Elgar, director of Cymru at Friends of the Earth, said: “It has been clear for many years that the coal industry in Wales has come to an end. Over the past five years we have had strong statements from the Welsh Government that further mining Fossil fuels are not in line with our climate change targets. This is supported by planning and coal policy, which clearly says coal should no longer be mined in Wales.”
WWF Cymru Director Gareth Clubb said: “For Ffos-y-Fran, the focus now must be on restoring the site and giving back to a community that has suffered from noise pollution, air pollution and coal dust over the years.
“We call on mine operators to recommit to their duty to restore this massive damage to the Merthyr Tydfil landscape. It is unconscionable for the operators to add an abandoned pit to this bitter legacy.”
Merthyr South Wales did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
the author
Catherine Early is a freelance environmental reporter and chief correspondent ecologist. She tweets @Cat_Early76.
