Just two weeks before the April 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch coal mine, federal mine-safety regulators warned lawmakers about serious enforcement lapses in the agency. "On March 25, 2010, the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration submitted a mandated report to the Senate Appropriations Committee on the activities of MSHA's internal Office of Accountability," which revealed, among other things, that over the previous two years MSHA "inspectors in 20 of 25 field offices reviewed did not properly evaluate the gravity and negligence of mine operator safety and health violations," Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette reports. The report covered the last year of the Bush administration and the first year of the Obama administration.
The report also revealed MSHA officials in 15 of the 25 field offices did not adequately document inspections so that any enforcement actions taken would stand up in court, supervisors in 21 of the 25 offices did not perform in-depth reviews to ensure that inspectors took appropriate enforcement actions, and inspectors in four offices did not complete mandatory spot inspections for mines that generated large amounts of explosive methane gas. At an unspecified number of field offices, there was a "lack of comprehensive inspections of all areas of the mining operation" and inappropriate "levels of enforcement issuances," Ward writes. MSHA said the report was focused on offices where the agency believed there were problems and therefore does not reflect the agency's work as a whole.
"The MSHA report -- just five pages long -- did not list the field offices that were audited or those where problems were found," Ward writes. "And MSHA does not post individual audit reports by the accountability office on its website." MSHA said it would take more than 30 days to respond to the Gazette's request for the individual audits and the agency could not release the full report because it could only be made public by Congress. "MSHA said it planned to spend $600,000 on the [accountability] office during the 2010 budget year, but was 'currently evaluating the restructuring' of the office 'to assure that targeted areas are effectively audited,'" Ward writes. (Read more)
The report also revealed MSHA officials in 15 of the 25 field offices did not adequately document inspections so that any enforcement actions taken would stand up in court, supervisors in 21 of the 25 offices did not perform in-depth reviews to ensure that inspectors took appropriate enforcement actions, and inspectors in four offices did not complete mandatory spot inspections for mines that generated large amounts of explosive methane gas. At an unspecified number of field offices, there was a "lack of comprehensive inspections of all areas of the mining operation" and inappropriate "levels of enforcement issuances," Ward writes. MSHA said the report was focused on offices where the agency believed there were problems and therefore does not reflect the agency's work as a whole.
"The MSHA report -- just five pages long -- did not list the field offices that were audited or those where problems were found," Ward writes. "And MSHA does not post individual audit reports by the accountability office on its website." MSHA said it would take more than 30 days to respond to the Gazette's request for the individual audits and the agency could not release the full report because it could only be made public by Congress. "MSHA said it planned to spend $600,000 on the [accountability] office during the 2010 budget year, but was 'currently evaluating the restructuring' of the office 'to assure that targeted areas are effectively audited,'" Ward writes. (Read more)
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