Edmund Richards, who worked for 40 years as a miner, shakes his head sadly as he gazes at one of the many disused coal tips at the head of the Rhondda Fawr valley in south Wales. “They’re on the move,” he says. “No doubt. From time to time, inspectors will come and have a look, and say all is fine, but everyone around here knows they are on the move, on the slide.”
It isn’t always easy to spot the tips in this craggy landscape decades after most of the mines closed. Often, they are cloaked in scrub and trees but Richards, 80, says everyone who lives nearby knows where they are and is worried about them. “They need to get on and sort them out once and for all,” adds Richards. “It’s only a matter of time before something terrible happens.”
The issue of what to do about Wales’s 2,500 disused coal tips is back on the political agenda after the Labour-led Welsh government published maps pinpointing 350 situated close to homes and communities that it fears could put people at risk in the event of a landslip.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The issue of what to do about Wales’s 2,500 disused coal tips is back on the political agenda after the Labour-led Welsh government published maps pinpointing 350 situated close to homes and communities that it fears could put people at risk in the event of a landslip.
It was a mammoth task to identify, record and categorise all the tips on a central database for the first time but an even tougher job seems to be persuading the UK government to help pay for the inspections and, ultimately, make them safe.
Beth Winter, the Labour MP for Cynon Valley, brought up the issue in the House of Commons at prime minster’s questions.
The Plaid Cymru Senedd member for South Wales East, Delyth Jewell, who speaks for the party on energy and the environment, said extreme weather caused by the climate emergency was making the tips more unstable.
She said: “Whilst the profits from this black gold overwhelmingly were shipped away from Wales, our communities were left with the dust that choked miners’ lungs, and the waste that littered the landscape.
A spokesperson said: “The management of coal tips in Wales is one of the Welsh government’s devolved responsibilities and one it is more than adequately funded to meet after receiving the largest annual settlement in the history of devolution at spending review 2021.”
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