"We're tired of fighting Welsh Water."
Residents in Merthyr Tydfil are campaigning against new Welsh Water plans. And they're exhausted.
Hello and welcome to The Valleys Lead.
Spring and has sprung and the sun is out.
Today, we have a story for you about a group of residents in Merthyr Tydfil who have massive environmental and economic concerns about Welsh Water’s plans to build a new water treatment center.
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The Valleys Briefing
(A little round-up of some stories in brief from our valleys.)
Last week, we reported on the four-week long health visitor strike within the Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board. This week, it has been announced that health visitors will strike for a further eight weeks. “Children in South Wales will have development checks cancelled or delayed as a health board refuses to pay health visitors the correct salary,” Unite the Union has said. “The industrial action will see essential, mandatory appointments go unfulfilled due to the stubbornness of their employer who is refusing to pay them the correct salary based on their qualifications which is costing them between £8000 to £9000 per year.”
Nine routes have been ruled safe by Caerphilly Council and around 340 learners in these areas will no longer qualify for free school transport after the end of the summer term with parents and carers told to make their own transport arrangements to ensure regular school attendance. The changes announced by Caerphilly County Borough Council, tighten the criteria for free home-to-school transport by assessing whether a walking route is “available”—a definition many families say ignores real-world risks, said Plaid Cymru Councillor Charlotte Bishop. “Residents are up in arms about this, and rightly so. A route being marked as ‘available’ on paper does not make it safe in reality. Parents are being forced into impossible choices—send their child along a route they believe is unsafe or risk their education being disrupted. Concerns have also been raised around the expectation that pupils rely on public transport as an alternative. Yes, public transport may exist on paper, but it is unreliable and not cost effective. It is not an efficient or dependable option for getting children to school safely each day.”
A new £77.5million Welsh-medium secondary school building is set to be built in Rhondda Cynon Taf. It will accommodate 750 pupils aged 11-16 as well as sixth form for around 150 students. The Welsh Government has set a vision - Cymraeg 2050 - of a million Welsh speakers in Wales by 2050, and helping to meet this goal seems to be a priority for RCT. One letter of objection questioned the priority for spending money on Welsh-medium education instead of priorities residents feel are more important. Responding to this rejection, a report stated that priorities and decisions regarding investment strategies were not relevant to planning.
“We’re tired of fighting Welsh Water.”
At the start of the year in 2022, Sian Davies, a 67-year-old who has lived in Merthyr Tydfil all her life, opened the doors to her garden and could see that across the way, stood on the farmland a stone’s throw away from her house, were men speaking about “drilling and measuring and pumping.”
Soon, the community she lived in were all talking about how Welsh Water were considering the land as the site of a new water treatment plant, and worrying about the impact the plans would have on the countryside, some of the only unspoilt land left in Merthyr Tydfil.
The plans slowly emerged: Welsh Water wanted to buy about 100 acres of farmland in Pontsarn, in Merthyr Tydfil, for their new plant.
Welsh Water said that the investment was needed as three water treatment works in the area were ageing and nearing the end of their operational life. They started consultations to replace the three aging treatment works with a single new water treatment works on Gurnos Farm in Pontsarn.
Pressure was further mounting on Welsh Water as there has been a new legal duty had also been placed on them by the Drinking Water Inspectorate requiring them to upgrade the treatment processes in the area by March 2030.
And so the consultation phase began. A spokesperson for Welsh Water told The Valleys Lead that they carried out a non-statutory consultations in 2022. “These early engagement exercises allowed us to share emerging proposals with stakeholders and local communities, and the feedback received played a vital role in shaping and refining our plans, including a review of site selection options.”
“Welsh Water arranged a couple of consultations with the public, but hadn’t publicised them,” Sian told The Valleys Lead. “They weren’t giving us much information.”
Locals organised a Facebook campaign group, Protect Pontsarn, whose members met in person and staged a protest in April 2022 where nearly 150 people showed up with signs and placards reading “Save Pontsarn from Welsh Water.”
One of their meetings, Sian recalls at least 500 people being present who weren’t happy with the water treatment centre plans.
“They’ve picked a greenfield site,” Sian said. “Why can’t they choose a brownfield site? There is going to be noise and light pollution. The river below the land will be polluted. When they do run-offs, they would flood the river and wash away all the existing wildlife. It’s going to affect tourism to the area. Locals will lose one of the only green wild patches left in Merthyr. I don’t think they have sufficiently researched sties that don’t impact all of these things.”
During meetings with Welsh Water, representatives explained to Sian and the members of Protect Pontsarn that the site was needed for the area to have clean water.
“We were told a number of sites had been considered, and this had been the most suitable for a number of reasons including proximity to the existing water network, proximity to Llwyn-on, Cantref and Pontsticill reservoirs and its high elevation which minimises the energy needed to pump water to customers, therefore keeping its carbon emissions low,” Sian said.
Sian and other residents kept pressing Welsh Water with their concerns, and in 2024, Welsh Water told residents that “due to the strength of feeling,” they were going to consider a new location down the road at Dan-y-Castell Farm, near Galon Uchaf.
