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Mining company sells out local communities to keep record profits

Merthyr (South Wales) Ltd illegally mined coal at Ffos-y-fran for over a year, profiting from record coal prices. Now, it wants to keep all the profits by trying to downgrade the restoration plan, breaking its promise to the 60,000 residents of Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales.

Take action by 14/03/25!

Your letter means much more if it's put in your own words why you want Merthyr Tydfil Council to deliver on its promise to return nature to the Ffos-y-fran opencast site, and reject the application to downgrade this huge restoration project. Here's some points you might choose to include, or go straight to the objection form:

  1. Residents deserve not to worry about a million cubic metres of mine water above them, with just a road between that and them.
  2. Residents deserve not to sorry about 37 million cubic metres of colliery spoil across the 3 coal tips becoming unstable in living memory of the 1966 Aberfan disaster, and recent 2024 coal tip slip in Cwmtillery.
  3. Residents deserve to receive the quality of restoration promised to them as a condition of the opencast coal mine.
  4. Residents deserve for the Council to investigate the mining company's unproven claim it can't fund the quality of restoration it's contractually obligated to deliver.
  5. Commoners deserve to have their rights and grazing land restored to them and continue their traditional way of life.
  6. The State of Nature Wales 2023 report outlined a nature emergency in Wales - we cannot afford to cut massively downgrade this restoration.

This will take you to the Merthyr Tydfil Council's short objection form.

Published: 28/02/2025

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