This has led to comparisons with Appalachia, which has also relied on a declining extractive industry(coal mining) and has suffered from high unemployment, poverty and a relatively unskilled workforce.
The big airlines had warned failure to consider a new runway at Heathrow would make the aviation industry go the same way as shipbuilding andcoalmining.
Although, by 1981, the proportion of Welsh employees working in miningand quarrying was just 3.8%, the coalindustry still had a symbolic place at the heart of ideas of the Welsh nation.
Mr Bevin, the then minister for Labour and National Service, introduced the scheme in response to an increasing shortage of labour in the coalminingindustry.
These forces are undercutting the coalindustry argument that mountaintop mining is an unalloyed good because of the jobs it creates, and bring more companies to the table to talk about reining in their excavators.