Living in the shadow of Wales’ last coal-fired power station and what will happen when it’s gone
People have lost their livelihoods while others believe they have sacrified a lot more, as Bronte Howard reports
RON LLOYD has spent the past 18 months using a ventilator mask.
He can no longer climb the stairs and sleeps in a bed that has been moved into the living room, looking out onto views shadowed by the 53m high mountain of coal ash which seemingly mocks his plight.
The 77-year-old has lived in a detached house in East Aberthaw with his wife Sam for the past 15 years. He’s been living in the village for 32 years.
The towering sight of nearby Aberthaw Power Station’s chimney dominates the landscape.
The ash pile, a by-product of the industrial giant’s heyday, is a reminder of an age when it produced enough electricity to power 1.5 million homes. But those days are long gone. In March the power station run by RWE will close for good and the remaining 170 people directly employed there will lose their jobs.
“When they were burning the coal, yellow plumes would blow across the village and over the Bristol Channel,” Ron recalls.
“We would watch them tip the ash and dust would go everywhere, it would cover the house.
“We don’t know if the lung disease is from the pollution, there’s no way we can know and we wouldn’t want to think about it.”
Aberthaw is the last coal-fired power station in Wales.
It once described itself as “one of the most efficient coal-firedpowerstations in the UK”.
But in 2015 a report by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth said the plant had the third highest emissions of nitrogen oxides of any industrial installation in the whole of the European Union.
“Hundreds of people’s lives are ended prematurely as a result of pollution from Aberthaw power station every year,” the report said.
“The pollution is responsible for causing asthma symptoms in children, bronchitis in children, chronic bronchitis in adults, hundreds of hospital admissions every year, and low birth weight in babies.
“Over the 45 years since it started operating, pollution from this one power station alone is likely to have caused the premature deaths of more than 3,000 people in Wales, and 18,000 across a wider area.”
In the same year the European Commission announced it was taking the UK Government to court over the emissions emitted from the power station and the following year, the European Court of Justice ruled that the pollution limits at at the power station had been breached.
In response RWE said it had a “proud history of environmental compliance”.
“I spent 23 years in the service and I was exposed to all sorts but surely it couldn’t have helped,” Ron added.
Over the years the couple have complained to RWE about the dust.
He said RWE employees would visit the couple and carry out tests which would always indicate that levels were below what is considered harmful.
Mr Lloyd said: “They would say the ash had nothing to do with the power station. We don’t have any proof. I’m glad it’s closing.”
The grassy mound which dominates the landscape is made up of tonnes of pulverised fuel ash (PFA) that FWE says has been made secure and covered in grass.
In 2007, the company behind the power station asked permission for the ash mound to be increased to a 61-metre mass. The application was refused following local uproar.
In East Aberthaw residents describe the blight of keeping their windows clean while the power station was in full operation.
“The windows would be coated in ash,” said one.
“You would wake up in the morning and your house would be covered in ash. It would be all over the car, the driveway. It was everywhere.”
He added: “It’s a shame about the jobs but we’ve moved away from coal. There were once 30 or 40 trains going past a week, now it’s just four.
“Our houses are a lot cleaner than what they were. We can see out of our windows again.”
Another neighbour said: “Trains were going past every day carrying coal and idling and when they dumped the ashes after they had burnt it if the wind was blowing the right way, dust would fall everywhere.
“Doors and windows would be covered, cars would be black and we were breathing in that ash.
“It was horrible but we were used to it.”
What concerns Ron Lloyd now is the future of the site.
“We hear nothing from the politicians and we hear nothing from the council and we still get dust. Something has got to be sorted.”
Other residents have similar concerns.
“The chances are it’s valuable to someone,” a neighbour says.
“What happens when they want to move it? Are we going to have all the ash in the air again? Who is going to protect it and make sure it’s not tampered with?
“What’s going to happen to the asbestos at the site? We know it was used in construction back in the ’60s.”
In response to the concerns RWE spokesman Olaf Winter said Aberthaw Power Station emissions are regulated