Labor Department says its coal-mine safety unit failed to fully inspect one-seventh of mines

The U.S. Mine Safety Administration failed to conduct required inspections at more than one in seven coal mines last year, according to a Labor Department report released Friday night. The problem was worst in southern West Virginia, and the agency had "significant inspection and supervisory deficiencies" at the Utah mine where six miners and three rescuers died in August, said the report from the department's inspector general.

"The report depicted an agency that failed to devote enough resources to inspections at a time of increasing mining activity," writes Steven Greenhouse in The New York Times. The report said MSHA “did not place adequate emphasis on ensuring the inspections were completed.”

In southern West Virginia, 85 of 165 mines did not have one or more required inspections, and "The report noted 51 occasions in southern West Virginia on which inspections were started and then canceled, but nonetheless counted as complete," Greenhouse writes. "The report cited an additional 22 incidents in which inspectors visited inactive mines and counted their visits as completed inspections."

MSHA disputed some of the inspector general's numerical analyses and said it was unable to complete all the required inspections because it had to assign many employees to investigate disasters at the Sago Mine in West Virginia and the Darby Mine in Kentucky, and other accidents. (Read more)