Protester dressed as dead canaries blocking the road at the Ffos-y-frân coal mine. Picture by Kelvin Mason.On 8th May, five people were together fined £10,000 and ordered to pay courts costs of £525 for taking non-violent direct action to save lives and mitigate environmental harms. In April activists from Reclaim the Power and Earth First! Locked onto machinery and blocked a road to close Ffos-y-frân opencast coalmine in south Wales for a single day. Subsequently, Andrea Brock, 31, Crispin Field, 22, Rick Felgate, 24, Kim Turner, 24, and Alice Shipsey, 60, appeared before Magistrates in Merthyr Tydfil charged with aggravated trespass. During their action the activists dressed as dead canaries, conjuring the birds historically used in deep coal mines to indicate the presence of poisonous gas, underlining that coal from Ffos-y-frân is poisoning the environment and the atmosphere with similarly toxic gases.
Scaling the harms
Beginning production in 2008, Ffos-y-frân has produced around 6.5 million tonnes of coal to date. When burned to generate electricity this amount of coal produces almost 15 million tonnes of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, the principal driver of climate change. In addition to this global harm, Anne Harris of the Coal Action Network highlights the local impact: ‘Ffos-y-frân is covering people's homes in dust that residents are breathing in every day. Earlier this year, a United Nations special rapporteur on hazardous substances and wastes called for an independent investigation into the potential health impacts of the mine.’ Covering 367 hectares, Ffos-y-Frân is also a monstrous blot on the landscape, recreating the grim visage of the industrial revolution in an area trying to recover and reinvent itself after an epoch of unfettered exploitation that, almost needless to say, did not benefit residents of the area.
Between the local and global, the mine is harming people on a regional scale too. Anne Harris again: ‘Ffos-y-frân's main customer has been Aberthaw power station. Aberthaw is the dirtiest power station in the UK in terms of Nitrogen Oxides produced. In the first half of 2016, the plant emitted 11,003 tonnes of NOx, almost four times the 4,800 tonnes permitted [annually] under European Union Industrial Emissions Directive limits. The UK government has allowed RWE npower, the plant’s operator, to breach EU air quality regulations at Aberthaw, and a September 2016 ruling by the European Court of Justice said this was unlawful.’
