THE CONTINUING search for six miners missing in the collapse of a Utah coal mine has brought attention once more to the dangers faced by workers in that essential industry. It also raises the question of how seriously mining companies and the government take their responsibility to make deep-shaft mining as safe as possible.
Late last year, USA Today reported that since 1999, the Mine Safety and Health Administration had levied $9.1 million in fines against companies cited for safety violations after mine fatalities, but had managed to collect only about 28 percent of that amount. Many of the fines were reduced on appeal, some to a degree that seems unreasonable.
In one case, a mine owner in Alabama was fined $435,000 for an accident that killed 13 miners in 2001. A judge reduced the fine to $3,000, saying that the federal agency had failed to prove that the company had done anything wrong. And yet, the miners were dead.
As the cost of safety violations goes down, mining companies have less reason to invest profits in improving training and mine safety. At the same time, a drive to increase coal production in response to rising oil prices has put greater pressure on the miners and maintenance workers at the mines.
Those factors may have contributed to coal-mine deaths’ hitting a 10-year high in 2006, ending an 80-year run of steady declines in fatal mine accidents.
What does that matter in Kansas? Hardly any coal is mined in the state these days and the coal that is mined is taken out of surface pits, not deep-shaft mines. But coal is still essential to the economic health of the state.
Most of the electricity generated in the state is produced by coal-burning power plants. Every time someone in Emporia flips a light switch, the light goes on because miners have risked their lives to bring coal out of the underground darkness.
That dependence carries a responsibility to look beyond the monthly electric bill and consider the true cost of coal — in flesh as well as in dollars and cents. It also imposes a responsibility to insist that workers in the nation’s mines be made as safe as is humanly possible.
The regulations must be enforced, and companies that that ignore the rules must pay the price.
shoehorn (anonymous) says...
A federal judge finds that the agency failed to prove their case. Patrick Kelley implies that they are guilty, guilty, guilty! ( Or at least he believes so). If we could only get Mr. Kelley to run for president, too! What a wonderful place this would be.
August 14, 2007 at 4:58 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )