Coal Tips

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs – in the Senedd at 2:04 pm on 4 March 2020.

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Photo of Huw Irranca-Davies Huw Irranca-Davies Labour 2:04, 4 March 2020

Could I ask how much of the inspections, which I very much welcome, will deal not only with the large and obvious coal tips and coal deposits that still remain in some valleys, but also those which actually have been subject of reclamation previously, where you have, for example, housing, roads or other infrastructure built on top of it? Because it would seem to me that the same issues of saturated land and increasingly traumatic and increasingly frequent heavy flooding and rain may have issues for those.

Now, I'm not sure that those are within the investigations, but I'd like to reassure my constituents that things such as former opencast sites, roads and rails that are built, in effect, on coal sidings, that those will also be investigated as well. And if she doesn't have the answer now, I wonder if she could write to me, particularly in respect of my own constituency.