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Kentucky Turns Its Back on Strong Coal Mine Safety Rules |
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Last week, Kentucky legislators turned their backs on pleas to pass a strong mine safety bill from several widows whose husbands were killed in coal mines in recent years (see video).
On Feb. 22, the day after the women, miners and union leaders rallied on the Capitol steps in Frankfort, a mine safety bill that had won the backing of the Mine Workers (UMWA) and mine safety experts was “hijacked” and “gutted,” says the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Brent Yonts (D).
Yonts charges that without his knowledge and without an opportunity to argue against it, the House committee with jurisdiction over the bill substituted a far weaker version, deleting many key safety provisions.
The deleted provisions included a ban on using conveyer belt tunnels for mine ventilation. This “belt air” can contain high levels of coal dust and other toxic materials that can fuel fires. Belt air is suspected as a contributing factor to the 2005 mine fire in West Virginia that killed two miners.
Yonts’s original bill also required that each miner be equipped with a methane detector to monitor levels of the highly explosive gas. That provision was deleted in the committee version. A methane explosion killed five miners in Kentucky last year at the Darby Mine. In all, 16 miners were killed in the state last year.
Before the committee’s action, coal industry representatives argued against the bill. Bill Caylor, president of the Kentucky Mining Association, said if the bill had been in effect in 2006, it would not have prevented the Darby deaths.
Melissa Lee, whose husband Jimmy was killed in the Darby blast, told the rally:
I want to say to Mr. Caylor, shame on you for making the comments that this bill we want passed would not have saved the men.…This is a piece of my husband’s hard hat that survived. He could have took his own readings; he may have saved himself, as well as the others. How dare Mr. Caylor say that this bill would not have saved anybody. I don’t want what happened to my children, my babies, to lose another father or have another wife kiss her husband goodbye and not know if he’s coming home tonight.
The weakened version of the bill may go to a vote before the state legislature adjourns in mid-March. But Yont says he can’t support it in its current weakened form.
Kentucky State AFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan says the chairman of the committee that gutted the bill, Rep. Jim Gooch (D), showed:
total disrespect for the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Brent Yonts, and never allowed him to speak about the bill during the committee hearing….Rest assured, this battle is not over. As I stated in an earlier article, how could legislators not heed the cries and tears of widows and their children, and not do everything in their power to ensure the safest workplace possible for our coal miners.
In the wake of last year’s coal mine death toll, in which 47 miners died nationwide, Congress and several states have passed new rules on mine safety, and further congressional action is expected. Tomorrow, UMWA President Cecil Roberts will testify before a Senate committee and urge even tougher safety laws.
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