Local authorities are missing a massive £200 million from the funds they need to clean up the mess made by 32 opencast coal mines across central Scotland, a Sunday Herald investigation has revealed.
According to informed industry sources, the cash set aside by two major coal companies before they collapsed this year amounts to only a quarter of the sum now needed to restore scarred landscapes as local communities were promised.
As a result, most of the mines that are disfiguring large areas of East Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, Dumfries and Galloway, Fife and Midlothian are likely to remain derelict, or to be cleaned up on the cheap.
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