A landowner who buried a well-used footpath under tons of earth with a mechanical digger has said he did it amidst a backlash from residents against his business. Christopher Rees spoke to WalesOnline after we ran a story on the row in Stormtown in the Taff Bargoed Valley.
Residents of Stormtown say the skip hire boss has "cut the village in half" after he covered the route - a set of concrete steps that were an integral link between their tight-knit hillside community and the village of Trelewis below - late last month. Locals claim it is the latest incident in a long-running dispute with Rees, who bought the land two years ago, and they have aired their frustrations to the council and their local MP.
They say they're at their wits' end from being woken by lorries and heavy machinery operating on the site "at all hours of the day and night", even as late as 1.30am. Those whose houses back onto to Mr Rees' land claim he has damaged their back walls by using his digger to scrape away the earth, and one even said he had turned his digger to shine its light through a resident's windows at night.
