Slate Waste: Extraction and Reimagining in Northern Wales

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>> Peterson Toscano: Hi, I'm, Peterson Toscano, and this is Bubble and
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Squeak, a podcast with uncanny sounds, funny
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interludes and stories. Most weird, many true.
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Okay, here's season four, episode eight. Today's
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show comes in one big part with four guests and
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multiple towns. Here in central Pennsylvania,
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where I've lived for over 10 years now, I hear
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trains pass through all the time. In fact, I live
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in an old passenger railway station that has been
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converted into a home. Sometimes the train rolling
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through Sunbury, Pennsylvania, on third street,
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just one block away, sounds like it's pulling up
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to the house. Over 100 years ago, they built the
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rail infrastructure to connect Sunbury and the
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wider world to the coal boom towns of, Mount
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Carmel, Centralia, and Shamokin. These towns were
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once prosperous because of anthracite coal mines.
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When I drive through coal country, I see mounds of
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black waste, once grand buildings now in
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disrepair, empty storefronts, and dollar general
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stores. Many people who grew up in this isolated
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region have never left. But in their minds and in
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their conversations, they regularly travel back in
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time to a place of prosperity, community, and
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strong cultural identities. Over 3,000 miles away
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across the Atlantic is a region in northern Wales that
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reminds me a lot of Pennsylvania's coal country.
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They also have a storied mining history, not with
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coal, but with slate.
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Over the past two years, I've gotten to know some
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people in Wales. They told me about their towns
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with names I struggle to pronounce. Blaenau
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Ffestiniog, Caernarfon, Dyffryn Nantlle. Central
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Pennsylvania and North Wales have different
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stories and histories, but they are also made up
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of towns shaped by what was pulled from the
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ground. I spoke with four people living in North
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Wales.
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>> Nina Bentley: My name is Nina Bentley. I live in a town called
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Blaenau Ffestiniog in North Wales. But I grew up in
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London. I moved here about 11 years ago.
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>> Phil McGraw: My name's Phil McGraw. I grew up on the island of
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Ynys Môn, which is Anglesey in English. Now I
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live in Caernarfon, which is a town about 10
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minutes away from where I grew up. It's a Welsh
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speaking town. There's about 89% of people speak
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Welsh here. In between, I've lived in other
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places. Liverpool, California. And I think I found
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my home here because it's just full of interesting
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people. It's working class people. You have poets,
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judges, solicitors, doctors, builders, plumbers,
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all mixing in the Welsh language. It's pretty,
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pretty cool. It's different to a lot of places in
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Wales. It has a different history. You know, the
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castle was built here in 1160. The castle here is
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older than most countries around the world.
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>> Trey McCain: My name's Trey McCain, so I grew up in northeast
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Mississippi, not far from the city of Tupelo, the
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birthplace of Elvis. I work for a charity that
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supports chapels and churches here in the area.
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And that is how I was originally introduced to
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Wales as well. I was on an exchange between
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churches, oh, almost 20 years ago now. So, it's
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been a part of my story for a long time.
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>> Nina Bentley: The town itself is very grey in color. We have
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every different shade of grey here because we were
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the town that roofed the world. That is the start
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line for Blaenau Ffestiniog. There's the
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evidence of a thriving slate industry all around
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us in Blaenau Ffestiniog. Huge mountains of slate
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waste created during the slate industry, which
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pretty much wrapped up fully by the 1980s. So the
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population of this town is now about 5,000, but it
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used to be upwards of 11,000. So it's more than
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halved in just a few decades. It's very dramatic
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scenery around here. Just walking down any of the
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streets, you're just seeing huge, rugged hills,
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mountains. You can spot the tree line everywhere
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you look. Yeah, we've got a beautiful cwm, a valley that
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you can go to the edge of the town, not far from
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my work, probably another two minutes, you can
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look over this fantastic valley. You're looking
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over farmland, but also just wild land, really.
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And there's a lot of green around the town itself,
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like I say, is every shade of grey.
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>> Peterson Toscano: And there is Gwyneth Jones, who you will hear from
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in a moment. She was the first communications
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manager of a community project that is directly
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and indirectly involved in climate action. But
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this is not your typical climate change
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environmental group. This one is grounded in place
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and language.
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>> Phil McGraw: Growing up in northwest Wales, especially with the
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language. In my school, almost 60, 70% of the
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people were named after rivers, mountains, hills,
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counties, the county you were born in, et cetera.
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So that link to sort of nature and your area is
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intrinsic in people.
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>> Peterson Toscano: Gwyneth Jones introduced me to Nina, Trey and
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Phil. She contacted me about a bold experiment
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that brought five small Welsh communities
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together. Anyone who does community organizing
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knows that connecting with community members and
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starting new initiatives requires a great deal of
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patience and perseverance.
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>> Gwyneth Jones: A lot of people have been burnt, you know, from a
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lot of, well, well, maybe not well meaning, but
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projects that looked like they were there to help
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but actually didn't. So people are wary of any new
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thing that comes along, and they should be.
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>> Peterson Toscano: Gwyneth and a handful of local volunteers did the
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slow and steady work that led to a series of
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assembly meetings, visioning sessions, and the
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launch of individualized local projects. The
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overall project is called GwyrddNi.
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>> Phil McGraw: GwyrddNi means sort of a greening process to green
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something, and has a double meaning in Welsh
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because Ni it means us. So it has a double meaning
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of greening, but also to green us.
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>> Peterson Toscano: GwyrddNi. That's spelled G, W, Y, R, D, D, capital N,
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I. GwyrddNi.
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>> Nina Bentley: You're putting an extra syllable in there, that's
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GwyrddNi.
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>> Trey McCain: The double D in Welsh is pronounced the as in
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there, or then. And then everything else is more
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or less how it looks and how it sounds. GwyrddNi.
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>> Peterson Toscano: GwyrddNi.
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>> Trey McCain: The great thing about Welsh is once you know what
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one letter sounds like, it's pretty easy to say
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just about anything. With only a few exceptions,
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>> Gwyneth Jones: We work in five different geographical areas, even
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though we're in one county and nothing's further
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than an hour away from anything else. But still,
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each area has a very different character, a very
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different way of approaching people and getting
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people involved. That's also partly about the
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personality of the facilitator in the community,
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but also the character of the area. So we've never
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managed to do a one size fits all approach for
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anything that we've done. It's always very
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complicated work and it's, you know, it's really
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based on relationships as well. So you can put
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posters out there, you can put adverts out there.
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But in the end, most people come to events because
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of word of mouth, because they know the person
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who's organizing it, because they trust something
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about the name.
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>> Peterson Toscano: Now, I don't want to pretend that Welsh slate
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towns and Pennsylvania coal towns are the same
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place. They are not. Wales has its own language
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and history of conquest and its own arguments with
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England. But I know something about places where
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the land was cut open and resources extracted,
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places where wealth traveled elsewhere and the
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people who stayed were left to explain why the
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place still matters. Phil McGraw is very direct
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about a growing power imbalance in North Wales.
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Middle class English people can outbid many
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locals, pushing up house prices in an area people
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want to live in because of its beauty. But the
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tension is deeper than real estate. It is about
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the survival of a culture. Trey McCain, the fellow
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you heard earlier who moved to Wales from
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Mississippi, quickly realized what was at stake
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for his neighbors.
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>> Trey McCain: Despite the fact that this is Wales and this is
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where Welsh is from, Welsh is spoken by a minority
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of people within Wales today. And that's because,
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well, over the past few centuries it has lost
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ground bit by bit and sometimes quite rapidly to
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English. And that's because of economic reasons,
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it's because of immigration reasons. It's
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something that really touches people here. As they
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look back, they feel like they've lost quite a
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bit. They've lost the work that was here, they've
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lost their language and culture.
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>> Peterson Toscano: Even in the specific towns that are overwhelmingly
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Welsh speaking, the dominance of English still
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exerts a heavy pressure. Nina Bentley, who moved
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to the region from London over a decade ago, sees
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this systemic friction firsthand when just trying
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to do basic community organizing.
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>> Nina Bentley: Even though 90% of people are first language
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Welsh speaking, that doesn't necessarily mean that
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all the resources that come into the community
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are in the Welsh language.
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>> Peterson Toscano: Where I live in central Pennsylvania, the new
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arrivals are often Latinos. Some are Puerto Ricans
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and Dominicans moving from New York City to seek a
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better life for their children. Others are recent
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immigrants from Mexico and Central America. But
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both places are asking the same uncomfortable
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question: When a place has been economically hollowed out,
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who gets to arrive, who stays, and who gets to
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decide what the future sounds like? As citizens in
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northern Wales, the newcomers and the longtime
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residents seized an opportunity to build community
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and bring about meaningful change.
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>> Phil McGraw: It started off with Grant Peisley, who is an
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Australian. He moved to Wales about 20 years ago.
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You know, learned the language to a standard where
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he can run community engagement sessions and
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present at the highest level of government. He's,
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you know, an activist really. He wanted something
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similar to Citizens Assembly. He wanted to turn it
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around so it was really sort of from the bottom
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up. He felt that the community assemblies was a
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better word for this because it was going to be
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driven from the, really from the heart of the
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community. The task was to ask the question, how
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can we respond locally to climate change? What is
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within our power to respond? That probably put us
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on the path. It changed my life really.
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>> Peterson Toscano: Starting in 2022, they held community assemblies
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about the climate in five different places. The
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assemblies brought people together to share,
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learn, listen, discuss and plan before taking any
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action.
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>> Phil McGraw: We spent one hundred hours with five different
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communities in North West Wales. Four of them were
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ex-industrial sites. The Rust Belt, the forgotten
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people probably contributed GDP wise so much to
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the economies of America and Wales, but never saw
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the real benefits or the long term benefits and
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have just been left to fend them by themselves
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really. We were working within tricky, left behind
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communities this was being done bilingually to
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make sure that, you know, English language people
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felt welcomed, but also people who spoke Welsh.
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>> Trey McCain: It was really focused on listening, teaching us to
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listen to each other and then taking the ideas
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that we had and running with them and finding ways
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that we could respond and help the resiliency of
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our communities for the future.
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>> Nina Bentley: We had a process where we were delivering
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assemblies in these five areas and we've created
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action plans. And when I first started this work,
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I was really unsure as to whether climate change
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was more important than community development or
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community development was more important than
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climate change. I was like, a little bit in my
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spare time battling with the idea of priorities
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and important.
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>> Peterson Toscano: Out of those community assemblies, the five
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communities banded together and created a new
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organization.
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>> Phil McGraw: The end goal was for these communities to come up
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with an action plan for themselves, split into
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different categories of, you know, food, energy,
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transport, et cetera. And now we have all those
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groups actually bringing projects to fruition.
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People are connected to nature, and I always bring
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it up in community assemblies. Through language
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and the history of people, you can see how they're
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connected and how they almost feel like protectors
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of their own land.
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>> Peterson Toscano: Some of the most successful projects center on
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food. Growing food, storing food, and sharing
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food. For Nina in her town, they found common
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ground around potatoes.
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>> Nina Bentley: It's very specific to my area and it's very
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specific to the action plan, that came out of the
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assembly process because the assembly members
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literally said, we need to grow more stuff. Let's
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start with potatoes. Let's get everybody growing
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potatoes. So it's part of how the accident's
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developing in this particular area. So there's
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some hyper local stuff that's really specific
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around the landscape, the people and the plans
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that came out of the assembly. But there's some
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very basic ways of working and sort of principles
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and fundamentals that GwyrddNi tries to deliver
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through, our work.
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>> Peterson Toscano: At regular gatherings, some large, some small
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community members get to know each other. This
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included what everyone was growing and what to do
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with the excess. Here is Phil talking about how
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pickling became a hot topic.
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>> Phil McGraw: So we had all sorts of things come out of these
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questions and these sort of long sessions of
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engagement. Pickling club, you know, pickling
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onions, pickling jams or Jell O's, you know,
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people coming together to use what they've grown.
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That's what was awesome about the sessions. There
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might only be about 300 people in the village.
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They would never come together in a session. So
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we'd