Mine disaster puts light, heat on inspection process

The April explosion at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia that killed 29 coal miners has focused fresh attention on the tension between mine safety and production, and the conflicts miners can feel. Miner Randy Lester works at Massey's Tiller No. 1 mine in at Red Ash in Southwest Virginia, which some have described as less safe that Upper Big Branch. He told Kimberly Kindy of The Washington Post that inspectors, who chronicled more than 625 serious offenses at the mine over the past three years, were being "nitpicky," Kindy reports. Lester fears government regulation of the mine could eventually cost him his job.

The injury rate at Tiller is 40 percent higher than at the Upper Big Branch and twice the national average. "Any day now, a judge with the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission is expected to rule on whether some of Tiller's contested violations are warranted," Kindy writes. "If they are upheld, the mine will be slapped with a 'pattern of violations' status, giving inspectors new authority to demand that work be halted in the mine until dangerous conditions are corrected." Still "mine's owners and operators have devoted equal effort to fighting off the sanctions," Kindy reports.
 
"It's a death sentence for a mine," Dave Kramer, president of Knox Creek Coal, a Massey subsidiary that runs the Tiller mine, said of the pattern of violations ruling. "To prove that a mine qualifies for a POV status, the [Mine Safety and Health Administration] uses an elaborate scorecard to evaluate safety conditions in 10 categories," Kindy writes. "Using a mathematical formula, the agency determines whether a mine qualifies for the toughest sanctions, based largely on the accumulated number of 'significant and substantial' violations." Meanwhile a mine operator has numerous options, including fixing potential problems during a 90-day notice period or contesting violations if they fall under certain categories, to delay or avoid a POV ruling.
 
"With this model, they are telling the mines to not pay too much attention to the fines and citations because they can always put them off with appeals," former U.S. Rep. Ken Hechler of West Virginia, author of the first federal mine-safety law, told Kindy. "These laws will never make a difference if there isn't a will to enforce safety instead of creating programs that can be manipulated." But the West Virginia disaster may be changing that inaction, as regulators are "working on legislation to shore up enforcement tools and give the MSHA greater power to shut down hazardous mines and require safety overhauls before they can reopen," Kindy reports. (Read more)