MSHA Failed to Watchdog Deviant Mine Company

MSHA Failed to Watchdog Deviant Mine Company
Today, the Governor’s Independent Investigation Panel submitted to the governor of West Virginia its report on the Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine disaster that killed 29 men in April 2010. Liz Borkowski at The Pump Handle blog has a detailed summary. Be sure to read it, especially if you’re going to bypass the 126-page report.

From a regulatory perspective, the bottom-line is this: Massey Energy, the owner of UBB, was a scofflaw – a repeat violator of critical safety standards; but for a variety of reasons, some explicable and some inexplicable, nothing was done to halt the company’s chronically dangerous practices at the Upper Big Branch mine. At a more visceral level, the transgressions and events leading up to and surrounding the disaster are a blow to human dignity.

MSHA clearly could have done more, according to the governor’s report: “Despite MSHA’s considerable authority and resources, its collective knowledge and experience, the disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine is proof positive that the agency failed its duty as the watchdog for coal miners.” In the year leading up to the disaster, the UBB mine was sending all the signs that it was about to be a big problem:

Inspectors spent 1,854 hours at the mine in 2009, nearly twice the time as in 2007. During 2009, they wrote 515 citations and orders for safety violations, including 48 withdrawal orders for repeated significant and substantial (S&S) violations. The monetary penalties proposed for violations in 2009 and early 2010 totaled nearly $1.1 million.
But MSHA didn’t exercise elements of its regulatory authority. The agency’s inability to place UBB, or any mine, on its pattern of violations list has been well documented. The governor’s report also points out that MSHA chose not to use its power to declare “flagrant” violations at UBB, which come with a $220,000 fine.

The agency also failed “to see the entire picture” and “to connect the dots of the many potentially catastrophic failures taking place at the mine,” the report says. As a result, MSHA lost sight of its most important goal: prevention. “Enforcement aimed at prevention is what Congress envisioned for MSHA when it passed the federal Mine Law,” the report reminds us.

Of course, Massey wasn’t making it easy. The company has years of experience gaming the system. It routinely appeals violations and generally gives MSHA the legal runaround. The governor’s report relays this tale: “Massey’s Vice President for Safety Elizabeth Chamberlin reportedly took a violation written by an inspector, looked at her people and said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll litigate it away.’ ”

I feel obligated to highlight one other element of the report, summarized by Borkowski:

Autopsies on 24 of the victims, ranging in age from 25 to 61, found that 17 of them (71%) had coal workers' pneumoconiosis, or black lung disease. Five of them had less than 10 years of coal mining experience. The current limits on coal mine dust, put in place in 1973, were intended to be sufficient to prevent CWP, but have apparently not succeeded in eliminating this irreversible respiratory disease.

Even if the explosion at UBB hadn’t occurred, holes in the regulatory safety net were going to jeopardize these men’s lives anyway. This is no way to treat humankind.

Liz Borkowski's summary is worth reading:

The "Failure of Basic Coal Mine Safety Practices" that Killed 29 Miners


The report references a study by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University's School of Communications; it found that Massey Energy had the worst fatality record among US coal companies from 2000 to 2010. During that time, 54 workers were killed in Massey mines, including the UBB victims. The company had an average of one fatality per 17.5 million tons of coal produced -- compared to one fatality per 296 million tons at Peabody energy, the top US coal producer. The AU team calculated that between 2000 and 2010, Massey was cited for 62,923 violations, and 25,612 of those were "significant and substantial." MSHA proposed $49.9 million in fines for these violations -- although, as the GIIP notes, the company made a habit of contesting proposed penalties, and so far has paid only one-third of the penalties proposed for violations at UBB between 2000 and 2009.