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Coal Company Pleads Guilty to Fake Safety Inspection |
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Supervisors at a Massey Energy Co. subsidiary coal mine in West Virginia routinely failed to perform mandatory safety inspections with the knowledge of top mine management, according to recently unsealed federal court records reported by The Charleston Gazette.
Federal law requires a pre-shift safety inspection of the mine within three hours before a shift begins. The mine examiner, often a foreman known as a fire boss, must complete the inspection before the next shift of miners goes into the mine. The inspection checks on methane gas levels, air flow, roof support and other important safety factors.
In plea agreement Thursday in U.S. District Court in Charleston, W.Va., Larry Roop, president of the White Buck Coal Co., pleaded guilty on the company’s behalf to failing to perform the pre-shift safety inspection at its Grassy Creek Mine on June 27, 2002. Last week, foreman/fire boss William Wine pleaded guilty to a similar charge. White Buck is a Massey subsidiary.
The plea agreement comes after a four-year investigation by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) of the fire boss practices at the White Buck No. 1 mine. While the plea agreement covers only the June 27 shift, according to the Gazette, failure to perform the pre-shift safety exams was far more widespread, covering about two and a half months.
In June 2002, MSHA inspectors discovered that mine records showed the fire boss at Grassy Creek was recording that the pre-shift inspections were being performed between 9:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. each night for a shift that began at 11 p.m. A thorough pre-shift exam at a large underground mine should take several hours, federal inspector James Strarcher told a federal grand jury, according to the court records reported in the Gazette.
There is no way humanely possible this exam could have been done. But this form indicates that air readings and everything that was supposed to be checked in that mine was done.
According to the Gazette’s Feb. 22 story on White Buck’s plea:
Court records show that miners complained about the violation to several levels of mine management, all the way up to Roop.
The paper reported Feb.18, after District Judge John T. Copenhaver Jr. unsealed court documents:
In a sworn statement, Wine said that Roop specifically told him to “fireboss as the men are taken into the mine.
“I thought this was his order and how they wanted the pre-shift exam to be conducted,” Wine said in his statement.
In court records, prosecutors explained that Wine had planned to testify at White Buck’s trial that he “was advised by mine management personnel that he did not need to begin the pre-shift examination so early and that he could pre-shift as the other miners followed him into the mine.
“Based upon that advice, he began conducting what he understood were legally inadequate pre-shift examinations,” prosecutors said. “This practice, which continued for several weeks, was known to and condoned by his supervisors.”
Yesterday when Roop entered the plea, prosecutors allowed White Buck’s lawyers to attach a two-page “Agreed Statement of Facts.” It says in part:
That while there is evidence that similar violations occurred in the two months preceding June. 27, the misconduct was an isolated, not systemic problem.
White Buck could be fined up to $200,000 when sentencing takes place in May.
Massey also faces a civil investigation by MSHA and a separate criminal probe by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charleston for a January 2006 fire that killed two miners at its Aracoma Alma No. 1 Mine in Logan County, W.Va.
The Aracoma deaths last year came days after the Sago Mine explosion that killed 12 miners in Upshur County, W.Va. Last year was the deadliest year in the nation’s coal mines since 1995, with 47 miners killed. Three coal miners have been killed this year.
Last year’s deaths spurred Congress to strengthen federal mine safety laws, and the new Democratic majority in Congress is expected to add more muscle to mine safety laws.
Despite last year’s coal mine disasters, President Bush nominated former Massey Energy executive Richard Stickler to head MSHA. After Stickler failed to win Senate approval twice, Bush used a recess appointment to place him in the post.
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