Published: September 05, 2008 05:00 pm            

Doing its job — 09/06/08

MSHA is getting serious about enforcing mine safety laws

What gives? After years of mostly lax enforcement during the administration of George W. Bush, the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration is suddenly earning the wrath of coal operators for its high fines issued for safety violations. What could cause a federal agency to switch from issuing to what amounted to little more than slaps on the wrist for serious violations to actually putting some teeth in the law?

Maybe — just maybe — it’s because the MSHA has seen the error of its ways and realized that the most effective way of insuring that mining companies follow the letter of the law is to aggressively enforce the law. The wrist slaps weren’t working; perhaps a few hard hits in the pocketbook will.

According to MSHA’s own records, the agency issued $97.4 millions in fines to coal operator during the first 10 months of fiscal 2008. That’s an increase of 141 percent over the previous year. Citations and orders for various infractions are up nearly 8 percent as well.

Not surprisingly, coal companies are complaining. They say the increased enforcement actions have stifled productivity, increased costs and prevented mine operators from cashing in on soaring international demand.

Such comments were unheard of just a little more than a year ago. Instead, MSHA was being blasted by members of Congress and by the United Mine Workers for failing to perform mandatory inspections at underground mines and for levying relatively small fines for serious violations.

But just as the woefully inadequate response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to Hurricane Katrina led to an overhaul of FEMA, a series of mining disasters beginning with the 2006 Sago mine explosion in West Virginia led to a change of attitude by MSHA officials, as well as the enactment of new federal and state mine safety laws. The result has been far more mine inspections on both the federal and state level and fewer warnings and more fines for violations.

As the mining accidents were investigated, it became all too clear that many coal companies — particularly the small operators — were ignoring safety laws, choosing profits over safety. While the causes of each accidents varied, almost without fail the investigations revealed that the accidents could have been prevented if the mining company had just obeyed safety regulations. Indeed, the findings of the accident investigators caused us to conclude that effective enforcement of existing safety laws was far more important than enacting new laws.

In deriding MSHA’s increased enforcement efforts, National Mining Association spokesman Luke Popovich said, “Some of these citations or violations are extremely petty and probably in no way contribute to safer conditions.”

To claim that issuing more and stiffer fines for safety violations does not lead to safer mines is absurd. Mines used to ignore safety regulations with the reasonable assurance that federal regulators were unlikely to inspect the mine, and if they did, issue only warnings for the violations they did find.

“Certainly when you find an unsafe condition and you require the operator to correct that condition, that has to be making the mine safer,” said MSHA director Richard Stickler. “We’re making more inspections, we’re writing more violations, and we’re assessing higher penalties. That’s our job. One of the tools we have is enforcement.”

The series of mine disasters also provide MSHA with the money needed to more effectively do its job. Congress enacted legislation adding 170 new inspectors to MSHA’s payroll and allowing increased fines across the board.

Certainly, better enforcement comes with a price tag. Patriot Coal recently told Wall Street analysts that MSHA enforcement has increased costs as much as $1.25 per ton. It’s a price comapnies — and consumers — should be willing to pay for increased safety in what will always be a dangerous job.

In our book, MSHA’s Richard Stickler is simply doing his job, bringing what has long been a missing aspect to mine safety laws: Effective enforcement. He merits praise, not criticism,

        

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