by Mike Hall, Jul 27, 2007

Last year, as more coal miners were being killed on the job since 1996—eventually 47 died—Congress passed the first major mine safety laws in more three decades. Mine safety advocates hailed the MINER Act as a good first step in improving mine safety and responding to emergencies.

But, “The job is not done,” Dennis O’Dell, Mine Workers (UMWA) Health and Safety director, told a House panel yesterday. O’Dell and other witnesses told the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections that two recently introduced bills (H.R. 2768 and H.R. 2769) address many of the most pressing needs in mine safety and health. (Click here to read O’Dell’s full testimony.)

Subcommittee Chairman Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) said the bills

…put teeth into the MINER Act, by tightening and supplementing current law with regard to detailed emergency response plans mine operators are required to put into place, the rescue, recovery and incident investigation authority of MSHA [Mine Safety and Health Administration] and penalties for those who break the law.

Among other provisions, the bills:

•  Increase the enforcement powers of the federal MSHA;
• Increase the penalties against mine operators that have a pattern of safety violations or that retaliate against miners who report safety and health violations;
•  Require a more rapid deployment of proven safety technologies, including underground communications systems and refuge chambers where miners could escape poisonous smoke and gases;
•  Ban the practice of using conveyor belt openings to ventilate mines (belt air);
• Require employers to provide miners with multigas detectors any time they work alone;
• Reduce miners’ exposure to coal dust by requiring them to wear personal monitors and cutting the permissible coal dust exposure levels.

But as O’Dell told the subcommittee:

The enhanced enforcement authority this new legislation provides MSHA will also be critical to ensuring the safety and health of miners but, as always, only if the agency embraces that new authority and actually uses it. Irresponsible coal operators need to know that MSHA is serious about enforcing all the laws on the books and also enforcing the penalties for noncompliance.

While headlines in 2006 focused on coal mine deaths, 25 other miners were killed last year and 35 died in 2005 in metal and nonmetal mines such as iron, limestone, taconite and other minerals. Mike Wright, United Steelworkers (USWA) Health Safety and Environment director, testified (click here to read his full testimony).

He said while some provisions of the legislation extend to metal and nonmetal mines, others don’t—but should.

One example is the use of flame-resistant conveyor belts. Belt fires are less risky in metal/nonmetal mines, since the belts generally carry nonflammable materials. But belt fires are still a potential hazard, and there is no reason to allow inferior belts in any mine.

We also believe that self-contained self-rescuers should be required in most underground metal/nonmetal mines….45 per cent of the mine fires reported to MSHA between 1991 and 2000 occurred in metal/nonmetal mines. There are plenty of combustible materials in such mines—belts, fuels for mobile equipment and mobile equipment itself, old timbers, methane, combustible ores like gilsonite and other materials. The January 2006 fire in a Saskatchewan potash mine, which forced 72 miners into a refuge chamber for 28 hours because of toxic gases and smoke, started in some plastic piping.

Yesterday’s session follows a June hearing before the full committee and a March Senate hearing that examined how effectively the Bush administration and MSHA were carrying out the new provisions and MINER Act. The committee found foot-dragging on the part of MSHA and also criticized the Bush administration’s overall track record on mine safety and its close ties the coal industry.

Click here to read all the witnesses testimony and for an archived webcast of the hearing.

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