Wales, UK

Aberdare Youth Environment Project

 

View north to the Brecon Beacons from Rhigos Mountain

We are fortunate to live in a remarkably beautiful part of the world. Although beneath our feet are the coal seams which have sustained local prosperity since the Industrial Revolution. In the middle distance of the photograph above can (just) be seen the surface buildings of the last deep mine in Wales - Tower Colliery.

To the south in the Rhondda Valleys and in the Cynon Valley (within which Aberdare is the largest town -  population 27000) the mines were closed during the 1980s and the area suffered a marked economic decline. Today Aberdare is in the bottom ten districts in the UK for real estate property prices.

Many former coal-tips and mineworking sites have now been landscaped - one in Cwmdare has even been transformed into a Country Park. New industries have been attracted into the valleys, but this has been a slow process, and not without reverses.

For many years since the 1940s a lynchpin of the local economy was the Phurnacite "smokeless fuel" plant at Abercwmboi on the Cynon Valley floor between Aberdare and Mountain Ash. Not only were up to 400 people employed there, but the plant took the output of several local collieries, working 24 hours a day to transform coal dust into "stove nuts" using a process known as "Disticoke" after the French company who developed it.

Whether the Disticoke process turned out to be dirtier than intended, or whether the plant became less efficient during its working life, the net effect was to blight the valley itself (and areas downwind) with a sulphurous cocktail of air pollution, and to leave the land upon which it stood with a longlasting contamination problem.

Nearly 13 years after "The Phurnacite" closed in 1990 the site looks like this:
 

View west across Cynon Valley towards Abercwmboi from Cefnpennar

The plant itself stood just to this side of the "lake" across from Abercwmboi village.

A focus of Aberdare Youth Environment Project since its beginning has been to try to understand the issues relating to the Abercwmboi site, and to consider alternative uses, preferably both providing local employment and contributing to the facilities in the area for young people in particular.

What can be done with a more-or-less level 91 acre site with good transport links and major centres of population within 40 miles? As an improvement upon what is there now, pretty much ANYTHING.

To help us appreciate the layout of the site and its present condition we decided a visit was necessary.

ABERCWMBOI FIELD TRIP - Wednesday 12th February 2003

One plan was to do a "Hike the World" there but this is hazardous:

So we decided to take a ride on the railway which runs through the site, and to get some photographs around the boundary:

Members of our Project Focus Group by the Phurnacite gates at Abercwmboi

To help set the scene here is a sketch map of the Phurnacite site:

Sketch of Phurnacite Site, Abercwmboi - after Ordnance Survey 1:5000 Landplan

The site is about a mile long, with a railway and a small river running through it - there are stations just off the sketch-map to north and south. The football ground serves Abercwmboi village and gives a comparison for the size of the lake and of the site as a whole.

The following panoramic shot was taken from the village looking across to the lake facing northeast:
 

View across Phurnacite lake from Maple Terrace, Abercwmboi

When the Phurnacite plant was in operation, one of the most noticeable features (aside from the smell) of a drive along the road from Mountain Ash to Aberdare, which borders the site to the northeast, was the number of dead trees. These have largely been removed from the roadside, but along the railway many bleached recumbent tree-trunks can still be seen. Efforts to photograph these from the train were hampered by dirty windows and bright sunlight.

At the southern end of the site is a public footpath which crosses the railway close to a pond from which can be seen protruding dead tree-stumps (see picture below) which date from the time when the plant was in operation. Part of the footpath is eroded by a small stream draining from the Phurnacite ground. 

Pond close to Phurnacite with dead trees

Stream issuing onto public footpath

It is encouraging that there is evidence of new vegetation growth around the site, although most of what can be seen flanking the footpath (and woven into the fence in the foreground of the Pond picture) is "Japanese Knotweed" (Polygonum Cuspidatum) one of the most invasive and pernicious plants on the planet, and notorious for destruction of wildlife habitats as it chokes out native plant species.

The only example of wildlife observed during the visit was a single Robin close to the footpath.
 

What is being done to clean up the Phurnacite?

Our research so far indicates that funds have been allocated to decontaminate the site - the figure of £5 million (approx US $8million) has been mentioned - but not drawn down. The UK Environment Agency website indicates that progress has been suspended due to planning objections.

Informal enquiries made locally indicate that:

  • Money allocated for the clean-up is insufficient to do the job properly, and firms prepared to undertake the work can only do so profitably if they are granted permission to carry out open-cast mining on the site. This is unacceptable to local people who have raised objections to the plans.
  • Tests carried out on water in the lake are alleged to indicate that pollutants are present which are not associated with the Phurnacite plant's operation. It may be that some illegal toxic waste disposal has taken place during the time since the plant closed.
We have addressed questions about the current status of the site to politicians who represent the area, and hope to report further once replies have been studied.