by Mike Hall
The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) was “negligent” when it approved a mining plan that most mine safety experts believe played a major role in the Crandall Canyon coal mine disaster that killed six miners last August, a new report from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Inspector General’s office finds. Three rescue workers were killed several days later attempting to reach the workers.
The report does not pinpoint a cause for the deadly collapse but does charge MSHA with failure to “do everything appropriate” to protect the miners. MSHA approved the plan that called for “retreat mining,” where pillars of coal left in previously mined areas to support the mine roof are pulled down, allowing the roof to collapse and the recovery of more coal. According to the report:
MSHA’s actions and inactions, taken as a whole, lead us to conclude that [MSHA] lacked care and attention in fulfilling its responsibilities to protect miners….MSHA could not show how it analyzed roof control plans, the criteria it measured the plans against, the rationale for approving the plans, that the plans were properly implemented or that the plans continued to protect miners over time. These deficiencies evidence the agency’s serious and systemic lack of diligence in protecting miners, and we do not believe it is misleading to use the term “negligent.”
Following the Aug. 6 collapse, Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy Corp., which owned the mine, denied retreat mining was being used in the area where the six—whose bodies remain entombed in the now shut mine—were killed.
The report also raised concerns that company officials may have pressured MSHA to approve the plan. In a memo to MSHA two days before the safety agency approved a retreat mining plan, a Murray company official wrote:
I have a fire under my ass to get this approved. I need your help.
Mine Workers (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts says the report confirms what the union has alleged for years—that the relationship between mine owners and MSHA is too cozy.
We’ve argued for years that many at the upper levels of MSHA are more interested in helping mine operators increase production than they are in helping miners stay safe. The Kennedy report and the I.G. [Inspector General] report both blow the lid off the internal workings of the agency, exposing for all to see what actually happens and confirming what we’ve said.
In March, Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy’s committee released its report on the disaster and found:
MSHA failed to protect the Crandall Canyon miners by “rubber-stamping” a dangerous mining plan and charged Murray with a “callous disregard for the law and for safety standards, and hardworking miners lost their lives.”
The Inspector General’s report was conducted at the request of Sen. Kennedy (D), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee.
Murray has yet to come before Senate or House committees, declining several invitations to testify. He has since been subpoenaed to appear before the Senate Appropriations labor subcommittee and the House Education and Labor Committee.
The report also criticized MSHA administrator Richard Stickler for allowing media and family members to accompany rescue operations over the objections, the report says, of local MSHA officials. Says George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee:
The report also raises very troubling questions about the decision by MSHA’s leadership to allow individuals not involved in the rescue into the mine while rescue efforts were ongoing. Members of the news media—who apparently had “fast and not so good” safety training—and family members of trapped miners were allowed into the mine despite objections from other MSHA officials….Stickler should better explain that decision, which may have put people’s lives at risk unnecessarily.
Miller also says the report shows that new tougher mine safety laws, like the S-MINER Act, passed by the House earlier this year, are needed.
Miners performing retreat mining in this country remain at serious risk because of MSHA’s deeply flawed process for reviewing and approving retreat mining plans. In January, the House of Representatives passed legislation to require that MSHA strengthen its procedures for reviewing and approving retreat mining plans. The legislation also requires MSHA to observe retreat mining operations once they are in place to ensure they are being performed in accordance with the plans and that miners are properly trained. The Inspector General’s report shows why this legislation is so urgently needed.
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