From: Courrier-Journal.com
Since April 2010, the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration has conducted 251 so-called “impact inspections” in coal mines, including 73 in Kentucky and seven in Indiana.
Those safety sweeps have netted 4,530 citations for violations, including nearly 2,000 in Kentucky and 111 in Indiana. At
the same time, MSHA has ordered 427 temporary mine closings to fix problems, including 174 in Kentucky and six in
Indiana.
Two years into his job as the nation’s top mine regulator, MSHA Administrator Joseph Main says the safety blitzes and other initiatives he’s championed are building blocks for “the best foundation … for mine safety in this country.”
MSHA also is moving ahead with proposed regulations to improve and tighten coal-dust monitoring to protect miners from excess exposure that can lead to black lung disease; new rules to crack down on operators with a pattern of safety violations; and additional action to prevent equipment from crushing miners.
“We’re trying to do the right things, whether it be ending black lung disease, preventing these most common deaths (in accidents) … and preventing mine disasters,” Main said in an interview. “I know that we need more improvements to get us where we need to be.”
After the carnage of 2010, in which 48 miners, including the 29 at Upper Big Branch, died in accidents, 2011 is on a track for a near-record low, with 17 deaths so far, six of them in Kentucky.
“All the things that we are doing and all the things that the industry is doing are getting us there,” Main said. “But I’ll say this, in a moment, if you take the focus off of what’s going on, that can change.”
“America’s miners are safer on the job because of the leadership of Joe Main,” Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., said in a statement.
Miller, one of the most vocal mine-safety advocates in Congress, said Main has held mine operators accountable for safety hazards by using enforcement tools MSHA was given in the late 1970s but had never employed.
“Joe Main has focused like a laser on improving safety through guidance, compliance assistance, new rules, tough enforcement and safety blitzes,” Miller said. “Miners should know that they have a former underground coal miner who has their backs.”
UMW President Cecil Roberts praised Main’s tenure for “some of the most significant progress that has been made in enforcing mine safety and health laws in our nation’s history.”
“Joe deserves a lot of credit,” agreed Tony Oppegard, a Lexington attorney who is a former state and federal mine safety official. “He’s not interested in helping to protect his buddies in the industry, he’s not a figurehead, and he’s not a caretaker. … He’s actually someone whose entire career has been to protect miners’ health and safety.”
National Mining Association spokeswoman Carol Raulston declined to discuss Main specifically.
But in response to the safety blitzes and the agency’s efforts to find operators with chronic safety violations, she said: “It is every mine’s responsibility to abide by the rules and regulations. But ensuring our mines and employees are safe will take new approaches, based on our analysis of mining and nonmining operations — domestic and international — that have achieved dramatic safety advances. We are working on those new approaches now.”
The industry opposes the stronger coal-dust regulations and wants MSHA to withdraw them and start over, Raulston said.
“Based on analysis by consultants retained by (the association and) member companies, the coal-dust rule will not result in improved worker health … there are no data to support health improvements based on the levels MSHA has proposed,” she said.
After four decades dealing with coal mining issues, Main was known in the industry and on Capitol Hill as one of the nation’s most knowledgeable experts on mine safety and health when he was picked to head MSHA by President Barack Obama. Main officially started work at the agency on Oct. 21, 2009.
Reflecting on his tenure, Main says the Upper Big Branch explosion in West Virginia — the worst mining accident in the United States in 40 years and an event he would say “gave us all pause” — instilled in his agency a new determination to root out industry problems and prevent another such tragedy.
Both approachable and driven, Main said he has come to appreciate that “these are not easy tasks.”
“Political leadership of all parties and at all levels were calling for stronger enforcement in the weeks and months after (Upper Big Branch), and that is exactly what has happened under Joe’s leadership,” Roberts said.
The UMW, issuing its own report on the accident last week, agreed with federal and independent investigators that the blast was caused by defective equipment that failed to detect a methane leak, which was ignited by mining equipment and fed by excessive coal dust.
But the union also attacked MSHA’s district office, though not Main, for failing to take aggressive corrective actions against the Upper Big Branch Mine. The mine was “crying out for the federal government to step in and shut it down,” said the UMW report, which was entitled “Industrial Homicide.”
The union also was critical of what Roberts called “the secretive nature” of MSHA’s investigation.
Main said his agency was reviewing the findings, but that they matched earlier conclusions, including that the Upper Big Branch’s then-owner, Massey Energy, “promoted a culture that put profits ahead of safety.”
For coal operators who do get it, “they’re doing what we ultimately believe they need to be doing, and that is, inspecting their own mines and fixing a problem and not waiting on MSHA to show up to fix it,” Main said.
“It’s the worst operators who get blitzed,” Oppegard said. “If you are a good operator a nd have a good safety program in place, you’re not going to get blitzed.”
MSHA has set up a database so mine operators and the public can compare their safety records to the criteria for determining when a mine is nearing a “pattern of violations” designation.
“It is a remarkable tool that we think will help the mining industry understand not only what the system is and what the rules are, but (also) to check every day to see if they’re even getting close to it so they can make their own adjustments to clean up their act,” Main said.
His agency also is proposing new rules to streamline the pattern-of-violations process so inspectors can act faster against outlaw operators. The rules would put an end to warning letters to operators that they had a “potential” pattern of violations. Appeals of citations, which can stretch over months or years, would not allow an operator to avoid a pattern-of-violations designation, as has been the case in the past.
In addition, MSHA is proposing uniform and simplified safety standards that would allow federal inspectors to go after problem mines quickly.
MSHA’s issuance of new rules to lower the amount of coal dust miners may be exposed to followed years of debate between regulators and the industry. The rules will require miners to carry monitors that will give them constant readings of dust levels while they are working.
Meanwhile, the agency is holding public hearings on new regulations to install warning devices and shut-off systems on what are known as continuous-mining machines to prevent crushing accidents that have been common in underground mines for decades. Since 1984, 31 miners have been killed and 220 injured in crushing accidents.
MSHA expects to require proximity-detection systems on machines three to 18 months after the final rule is published, depending on when the equipment was manufactured.
