Documents efforts to revitalize the polluted, impoverished communities in the former coal and steel producing valleys of South Wales.
The valleys of South Wales once produced much of the coal and steel which powered industrial development in Britain-and worldwide. Today those industries are gone. Their legacy is a polluted pocket of poverty-180,000 people nestled in the steep-sided windswept valleys of Caerphilly County; where the highest rates for chronic emphysema, cancer, heart disease, asthma, poor housing and sanitation, low birth weight and accidental death combine to mean that people living here suffer the highest mortality rates in Western Europe. There are schemes to regenerate the entire area-health projects, with incentives, working groups, investment and employment strategies-but are these really working and what more can be done to lift this community out of its depression?
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