3. Statement by the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs: Emergency Flood Summit Update

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:00 pm on 25 February 2020.

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Photo of Dawn Bowden Dawn Bowden Labour 4:00, 25 February 2020

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I think it's important for me just to place on record my sympathy for the residents of my constituency, where we didn't see flooding on anything like the scale of Rhondda Cynon Taf, but we did see flooding in Troedyrhiw, Pentrebach, Aberfan, Quakers Yard, Pontsticill, Heolgerrig, Tir-Phil and Deri, and that was not insignificant for those individuals affected, as I'm sure you'll appreciate.

Most of the questions and the points that I wanted to raise, Minister, have now been raised, but there's one thing that I wanted to pick up. You will appreciate that landslides in my constituency have a very deep and painful history, and you have talked about the work being done on coal tips, and I appreciate that entirely. But I had a whole community in Troedyrhiw that were evacuated because of landslips in Troedyrhiw, but they were not actually to do with coal tips; it was literally the topography of the valley. There are very steep hills that are running right the way through our valleys—some of which are not related to coal tips. But those hills, those mountain sides, were so saturated, and they have streams and rivers running through them, that they couldn't cope with the amount of water coming through and they slipped, and we had to evacuate a number of streets in Troedyrhiw. So, my question to you, Minister, is, over and above what's being done around coal tips, what can we be doing to look at the general topography and stability of the hillsides, because this isn't going to be one-off? This is going to happen again, and we need to find some way of making sure that those steep hillsides are as secure as they can be when those heavy rains come again.