Massey Energy, owner of the West Virginia mine where 29 workers were killed in an April explosion, has filed a lawsuit against the Mine Safety and Health Administration for failing to approve ventilation practices that would have benefited the safety and health of miners. The company, which is under investigation by MSHA for the explosion, said its constitutional rights were violated because it couldn't challenge agency's ventilation-plan rules under federal law, Kris Maher of The Wall Street Journal reports.
In the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, Massey said MSHA "prevented the company from using dust scrubbers in its mines that would filter out dust that is dangerous for miners to breathe," Maher writes. Shane Harvey, Massey's general counsel, explained "The goal of the lawsuit is pretty simple. It's to retain some control of the ventilation plans our mines operate under."
An MSHA spokeswoman told Maher the agency doesn't comment on pending litigation, but the agency has said previously "It restricted the use of scrubbers at Massey mines because the equipment wasn't cleaning the air adequately," Maher writes. Ventilation issues are at the heart of the civil probe the MSHA is conducting into the April 5 explosion, Maher reports, but Harvey said the lawsuit is unrelated to the explosion. (Read more)
No comments:
Post a Comment