Demand nature be restored to Ffos-y-fran opencast site

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.

Object for better

Take action by 02/04/2026!

Your objection means much more if it’s put in your own words why you want Merthyr Tydfil Council to refuse the application to downgrade this huge restoration project. Here’s some points you might choose to include, or go straight to the objection form:

Residents deserve not to worry about a million cubic metres of polluted mine water above them, with just a road between that and them.
Residents deserve not to worry about 37 million cubic metres of colliery spoil across the 3 coal tips less than 3 miles from the 1966 Aberfan disaster.
Residents deserve not to worry about their kids playing near a sheer cliff edge with 100m drop into a flooded mine.
Residents deserve to receive the quality of restoration promised to them.
Commoners deserve to have their rights and grazing land restored to them in full.
The State of Nature Wales 2023 report outlined a nature emergency in Wales – we cannot afford this downgrade.

Benefits of the current full restoration plan

Ironically, the original approval of the opencast coal mine was to fund the restoration of the area which had been scarred by previous iron ore and coal mining. Key to the agreed restoration plan is that the huge overburden mounds (coal tips), currently dumped in 3 mountainous piles around the site, would be returned to the void, both of which were created by the opencast coal mining. That would return the site to the undulating landscape it was before and in sync with the rest of the lanscape in that area. Merthyr (South Wales) Ltd agreed to this restoration plan in 2015, when it took over operations at the site – but is now trying to wriggle out of that contract.

Can the company afford the current full restoration plan?

We got internationally renowned foresnic accountants, C. Lewis & Company, to analyse mining company Merthyr (South Wales) Ltd’s accounts. Guess what? Not only can the mining company afford the full restoration, it has even set the money aside for it, and it can’t legally spend it on anything else… unless the Council agrees to downgrade the restoration by granting the company’s cut-price restoration application.

It’s a stitch up! Don’t let it happen

A new cut-price plan to do as little as possible…

The new proposal was published on Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council’s website on Friday 21/02/2025. It is a plan to do as little as possible that would justify the company getting its hands on the £15 million currently held by the Council in an ESCROW account. But that £15 million was only intended to cover the barest necessities to make the site safe in case Merthyr (South Wales) Ltd goes bust. Merthyr (South Wales) Ltd hasn’t gone bust though, and should be stumping up around £75-110 million to pay for the restoration.

Main pitfalls of the new plan

Leave behind a flooded mining void (the void is 175m deep at one end) with capacity for 1 million cubic metres of water
Leave behind 3 overburden mounds (coal tips) containing approx 37 million cubic metres of colliery spoil, rock, and soil – around just 2.8 miles from the site of the Aberfan disaster, where a coal tip collapsed, killing 144 people. This would permanently alter the landscape beyond recognition from what it was before and the surrounding landscape.
Leave behind a huge exposed coal-face cliff. Other than being an eyesore for local people, rain will cause erosion over years expected to leach heavy metals and toxic elements from the coal into the flooded mining void that will discharge into local waterways.
An aftercare period of just 5 years – this must be at least 15 years to ensure any woodland planting that hasn’t survived can be replaced and nurtured to maturity.

Greenwash and urgency

The 218-page environmental impact assessment for the new plan is overflowing with greenwash. The assessment even claims that the lack of restoration it’s now proposing for the opencast coal mine will be an ‘educational resource’ and testament to the area’s mining history – more like a permanent reminder to Merthy Tydfil residents of broken promises and rampant profiteering at their expense.

The assessment fails to account for the impact that a loss of land and associated loss of carbon sequestion will have over the decades. The State of Nature Wales 2023 reveals the devastating scale of nature loss across the country and the risk of extinction for many species. This is not the time to cut the restoration budget by around 80-90% of a huge site – much of which has been off-limits to nature for too long.