So, in other words, short term gain for long term pain!

Pretty much the story of the Welsh slate industry for the last 200 years.

One might cite the example of Dinorwic tipping on top of good slate; the pillar-robbing that rendered so many mines unaccessible...

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I spoke to one of the lads working in the Oakeley 'pit'over the weekend.
He said to me that they have been working down and into the rock face without benching it and clearing ahead. Also there have been some serious underground falls which have created large cracks for quite a way. If the overhang comes down by itself they could possibly work it.
They cannot get material from other parts of the quarry neither as they have not cleared the top when they worked forward into the rock face. And there is no money presently to finance the untopping.
Possibly a very similar situation as what happened at Votty with no support at the sides of where they have been working etc.

Grrrr..... does nobody learn from the past ? All the walls - especially in the Old Vein, but no doubt eventually in the New Vein as well were cracked from Floor I upwards in the area of Sinc Fawr westwards - and in many cases the cracks extended from below up to the surface at Tan yr Allt - which was why the water courses on Tan yr Allt were virtually all fed into troughs to reduce the amount of water getting down into the workings via the cracks. All this long before McAlpines et al appeared on the scene.

When I visited in 2000 the then manager (I think) was at pains to explain how they were working far more carefully than in the past, reducing the overburden by benching etc. and doing nothing without a full and on-going geo-physical analysis.......

That said, I can only imagine the falls etc affecting the already inaccessible workings around Sinc fawr - the western edge of both that and Sinc Fach already being in a bad way.

Grahami

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So, in other words, short term gain for long term pain!

Pretty much the story of the Welsh slate industry for the last 200 years.

One might cite the example of Dinorwic tipping on top of good slate; the pillar-robbing that rendered so many mines unaccessible...

it isn't only Welsh slate by any means.

as a general comment on the early 'cost-book' system of working, and the limited liability partnerships which followed, many industries suffered from persistent under-capitalisation, with consequent focus on short-term cash flow rather than long-term investment.

It's also true that the British banking system ( and in this I include the Scottish one which while separate in some respects, has always had much in common with its English cousin ) has long since focussed on quick, high returns from various specialist extractive ventures - by which I would include the West Indian sugar trade, slave trade and Indian and China trades in tea, silk, cotton and spices

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