Mine Safety & Health MSHA

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NO MERRI

SEE COAL MURRAY BLANKENSHIP KIA WORKERS

REG CAPTURE?

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epic fail 2 black lung see zat

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/an-epidemic-is-killing-thousands-of-coal-miners-regulators-could-have-stopped-it/

...We’ve got the bodies to prove it”

NPR/FRONTLINE analyzed 30 years of data collected by federal regulators. They measure coal and silica dust where miners are working, and in 85 percent of the samples collected silica was at safe levels. But for that other 15 percent — which amounts to 21,000 dust samples — the data show that miners were exposed to excessive silica levels that violated federal health standards.

“That’s what causes disease, is the excessive exposure,” said Jim Weeks, an industrial hygienist and mine dust specialist at MSHA in the Obama administration and at the United Mine Workers union before that.

An NPR review of mine dust regulations also found that federal enforcement does not directly address silica dust. If regulators measure too much silica in mine air, they place coal mines on much tougher limits for coal dust. That’s supposed to lower the silica exposure because coal and silica dust are often mixed.

But our investigation found that this indirect approach to controlling silica dust didn’t always work. MSHA’s 30 years’ dust sampling data show dangerous levels of silica or quartz where miners were working close to 9,000 times, even after coal mines were required to meet reduced limits for coal mine dust.

“They didn’t pay sufficient attention,” Weeks concludes. “And …we’ve got the bodies to prove it. I mean these guys wouldn’t be dying if people had been paying attention to quartz. It’s that simple.”

We found another example of overexposure in MSHA’s data. Each time federal mine inspectors issued citations for too much silica, which they did only a fraction of the time, they included an estimate of how many miners were affected. A review of those data shows more than 9,000 workers were exposed to silica levels that the regulations considered dangerous.

This excessive exposure to silica almost certainly happens more often than the data suggest. That’s because the data show only what happens when regulators are checking. The inspectors don’t check most of the time miners are working. Dust sampling takes place during regular mine inspections, which are scheduled four times a year in underground mines and twice a year at surface operations.

And until recently, sampling did not take place every hour miners worked or while mines were at full production.

Another finding of the NPR/FRONTLINE investigation: During some of the heaviest periods of exposure to silica, regulations allow miners to work without any monitoring for it at all.

A white rock dust

Smith drove us past a pair of adjacent coal mines near his home in Canada, Ky., where he and other miners cut nothing but rock for months.

He was reluctant to pull over at the Rockhouse Energy Mine, even though it is closed, because security guards were watching from a parking lot. So he slowly passed by, describing work shifts that lasted 16 hours a day, seven days a week, for months, while cutting through solid rock. They used drills and mining machines to dig from one coal seam to another underground.

“It wasn’t coal dust that you would see,” Smith said. “It was more of a white rock … dust.”

Smith and his coworkers were cutting what’s called a slope mine. It’s not really mining because there’s no coal involved. It’s all about cutting through mountainsides or blocks of rock to reach coal seams.

And because there’s no coal, it is considered development mining or construction. So sampling the air for toxic dust is not required, even though it is the most dangerous dust. Former MSHA officials told us some inspectors did it, but most did not.

Smith spent months cutting at least two slope mines in his career and believes that could explain his severe disease, even though he worked underground only 12 years.

“Very possible,” he said, as we passed the mine’s abandoned conveyor belts that stretch over the road. “Most of my mining career I run a continuous miner. I run a roof bolter also. And it’s very possible from all the hours we worked.”

Roof bolters operate a machine that pins roof supports into underground mines by drilling into solid rock. The machines have customized dust-control systems that suck away dust, but miners complain they get bursts of silica dust when they begin drilling and then later when they empty boxes that collect the dust that was sucked away during drilling.

The machine known as a continuous miner grinds up rock and coal. Dust is supposed to be controlled by massive ventilation fans that pump air through the mine, while heavy curtains channel that air to sweep away dust. Mining machines spray water as they cut, to tamp down dust.

NPR interviewed 34 coal miners, all diagnosed with PMF and with 12 to 40 years in mining in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky. Sometimes the dust controls worked, most told us, and sometimes they didn’t.

Federal law requires mining companies to offer dust masks or respirators to miners, but their use is not required. The law considers them a secondary and optional means of protection. Mines are required to provide air clear of dangerous dust, first and foremost.

Most of the sick and dying miners we interviewed who used dust masks said they often didn’t work.

...

[insert]

In 1974, NIOSH first called for silica exposure limits twice as strict as those in place for coal miners and other workers. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that MSHA and others began to get serious about silica in coal mines.

NPR and FRONTLINE obtained internal memos from the Clinton administration that showed alarm back then about clusters of advanced lung disease among coal miners as young as 40. MSHA sent out alerts to coal mining companies, warning about excessive exposure to silica dust and severe disease among miners. NIOSH again called for a silica exposure limit that would be twice as tough, plus separate regulation of silica, as did a Department of Labor advisory committee.

“We started a national campaign first to raise awareness,” recalled Davitt McAteer, the assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health from 1994 to 2000.

“And it was that campaign that began to try to go after the silica requirements, raise the silica standard, and start on a separate path to control silica.”

McAteer proposed a major overhaul of the dust samplingsystem, which included other loopholes that permitted excessive exposures and inaccurate measurement of coal mine dust.But the effort encountered stiff opposition from the National Mining Association, the industry’s biggest lobbying group. The group sued over some elements of the plan and won.

“And then we ran out of time,” McAteer says. “And it’s something that’s unfortunate and put a lot of lives at risk.”

Mine dust loopholes

The regulation of silica dust wasn’t addressed during the administration of George W. Bush. During the Obama administration, mine safety advocate Joe Main was in charge of MSHA. Main was the longtime health and safety director at the mineworkers union and was on that Labor Department advisory committee that sought tougher regulation of silica back in 1996.

“It was very obvious that that whole scheme that had been in place, that has left so many people sick, had to be changed and had to be fixed,” Main said.

He was successful in closing major mine dust loopholes, and he deployed new technology — dust sampling devices that measured coal dust in real time and helped make sampling more immediate, honest and accurate.

Main also made the exposure limit for coal mine dust tougher. But not the exposure limit for silica. He didn’t include any specific action on silica in his plan.

“A high tide rises all boats, as the saying goes,” Main explained. “We were going to get a benefit out of reducing overall dust exposure by what we did. [That] would not only lower coal mine dust but all dust that was part of that, including silica.”

But as the NPR/FRONTLINE data analysis shows, that formula failed thousands of times in the past. Lowering overall mine dust doesn’t necessarily reduce silica exposure to safe levels.

Monforton wonders why MSHA missed or ignored that part of the dust sampling data.

“The fact that [NPR and FRONTLINE] went back for 30 years and looked at that data, and that data was available to the agency to assess as well, why wasn’t that problem recognized and rectified?” Monforton asked.

Main and other former MSHA officials say they thought they were doing what they needed to do to control silica.

Another agency did act on silica during the Obama administration. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration concluded a 44-year review of silica exposure by enacting tougher regulation of silica dust.

So now, every industry in the country that cuts rock, every industry except mining, has separate regulation of silica and an exposure limit twice as tough — the limit first recommended by NIOSH in 1974.

Mining companies also knew they were cutting more quartz, creating more silica dust, and exposing miners to toxic dust. They were not only clearly warned by MSHA in the 1990s; they could see what was going on in their mines. Cutting rock slows mining machines and hurts production. And rock has to be removed from coal before it can be sold.

So NPR and FRONTLINE wanted to know why mining companies didn’t act on their own to protect their workers.

“Sure they could have done that,” responded Bruce Watzman, the National Mining Association’s top lobbyist for more than 30 years. “But … I’m not going to speculate on why they did or didn’t do what they chose.”

“Our focus here is forward looking,” he said. “How do we prevent this in the future? I can’t answer for … what happened in the past.”

Watzman also asserted that the industry “is doing far better today than we did in the past, far better.”

That assessment is based on new data from MSHA following the new coal mine dust rules that began to take effect in 2014. Since then, mining companies have met exposure limits for coal and silica dust 99 percent of the time, the data show.

MSHA cited the same data in a written statement to NPR and FRONTLINE.

“The dust rule … has greatly reduced miners’ exposure to respirable dust,” wrote MSHA spokeswoman Amy Louviere, who also noted a sharp drop in the past 10 years in the percentage of mine dust samples with excess silica. Her statement did not address the NPR/FRONTLINE findings showing 30 years of excessive exposure to silica.

“MSHA continues to work diligently to protect coal miners’ health,” Louviere said.

But NIOSH epidemiologist Laney isn’t convinced the problem is solved.

“They’re sampled very infrequently so we don’t know what’s going on with these miners when they’re not being sampled,” Laney said. “Ninety-nine percent of the time we don’t have information on that.”

That’s also the conclusion of a recent review by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The new coal dust rules, the review committee said, “may not guarantee that exposures will be controlled adequately or that future disease rates will decline.”

It will also take 10 years or more to know whether the new dust rules result in fewer cases of disease. It takes that long for disease to develop.

“I said I suspect silica. I didn’t say it was”

MSHA declined multiple requests for interviews with top agency officials, including David Zatezalo, a former coal company executive and industry lobbyist who now heads the agency.

So we showed up at West Virginia University in September where Zatezalo was scheduled to make a rare public appearance.

“You hear the phrase in health circles of progressive massive fibrosis, these sorts of things,” Zatezalo told an audience of mining engineering students, agency employees and industry executives and lobbyists.

“To me, I believe those are all clearly silica problems,” Zatezalo continued. “Silica is something that has to be controlled.”

But immediately after his speech, when NPR and FRONTLINE approached him, Zatezalo seemed suddenly uncertain about silica and PMF.

“I don’t think that the science of the causation is that well-defined,” Zatezalo said.

Asked about the direct link between silica and disease he described in his speech, Zatezalo became defensive.

“No, I said I suspect silica. I didn’t say it was. … I think until such time as you figure out what it is you don’t really know,” Zatezalo responded.

So far, under Zatezalo, MSHA has no plan to address a tougher limit for silica dust or separate regulation of silica in coal mines.

In the meantime, the PMF epidemic continues. The biggest cluster of disease ever reported, according to NIOSH, continues to build at the Stone Mountain Health Services black lung clinics in Southwestern Virginia. The clinics continue to diagnose new cases at the rate of about a dozen a month.

“I’m not seeing any slowdown whatsoever,” says Ron Carson, who directed the Stone Mountain clinics for 28 years before retiring earlier this year.

“I think that America needs to know that these miners … have paid a price,” Carson added, his voice breaking. Carson cited the nation’s decades of dependence on coal for power and steel production.

“They paid a price so that we can have luxury and … so many have died. Thousands have died.”

“Every one of us is either crippled or dead”

...

Smith pulled up to another mine, which was also closed but had no guards in its weed-choked parking lot. This Solid Energy mine, along with the Rockhouse mine he drove by earlier, was operated byMassey Energy, now a defunct company with deadly mine disasters in its history and a CEO who went to prison for conspiracy to violate mine safety laws.

Smith got out and walked up to a rusted fence with a padlock. A ball cap shaded his face. Sunglasses hid his tears.

“It’s [been] eating at me for the last two years,” he said, “that I’m going to die over this. … Of all the things that could’ve killed me while I did work there, the rockfalls and all that stuff, I lived through all of that. And I find out years later I’m going to die over black lung. And it’s heartbreaking.”

Smith then mentioned his wife and two daughters and wondered what will happen to them when he’s gone. He wondered about the grandchildren he may never see. His voice breaking again, he talked about the excitement of being a young miner, about the hope and promise of good pay and good lives.

“We was all young and strong and stout and they took advantage of us. Every one of us is either crippled or dead. We was all young men,” he said, crying softly.

Back at his house in a narrow valley — a holler — in Canada, Ky., Smith pointed to a family cemetery on a knoll at the edge of the lawn he has so much difficulty mowing. It features a single gravestone with bright flowers and the names of his parents. Behind it, Smith told us, in the shade, is the burial plot he has picked out for himself. He’s 46 years old.

NPR’s Adelina Lancianese, Barbara Van Woerkom, Katie Lawrie and Cat Schuknecht; Elaine McMillion Sheldon of FRONTLINE; Benny Becker and Jeff Young of Ohio Valley ReSource; and Ellen Smith of Mine Safety and Health News contributed to this story.

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In 2014, MSHA issued a rule that lowered allowable exposure limits for respirable coal mine dust and required the use of different monitoring technology aimed at reducing mine workers' dust exposure. But the National Academies report said even that rule won't be enough to protect miners. It called for a "fundamental shift ... in the way mine operators" work to eliminate black lung.

The Trump administration last year said it was reconsidering that 2014 rule as part of its effort to roll back regulations.

On July 6, MSHA announced a new study of the Obama-era rule. But at the same time, Assistant Secretary David G. Zatezalo, a former miner and coal industry executive, insisted "MSHA has no intention of rolling back the protections afforded to coal miners under the final dust rule."

Even if a miner gets diagnosed with black lung disease, there's no guarantee he or she will receive benefits they are entitled to under federal law.

InsideClimate News, as part of it Choke Hold series, described how some companies have engaged high-profile law firms that in turn employ a cadre of doctors, setting the stage for protracted battles of conflicting medical opinions. Miners, meanwhile, are often overmatched because few lawyers will take their cases. Attorneys are barred from charging plaintiffs fees, meaning they receive modest compensation, and only if they win.

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EPIC FAIL

regulatory capture (maybe confused with in bed agy? MMS gulf oil spill]

http://www.msha.gov/

huffpo 12/11

wASHINGTON -- Having left Congress after an embarrassing 2007 arrest, former Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) has quietly reemerged in Washington as a lobbyist working on behalf of the coal industry. According to his federal filings, Craig has registered to wheedle his former Capitol colleagues on the obscure but critical issue of mine safety.

It's an issue that Craig's new client, Murray Energy, knows all too well. The largest privately held coal company in the nation, Murray Energy owned a subsidiary that ran the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah, the site of a tragic cave-in incident that took the lives of six miners and later three rescuers. The cave-in occurred in August 2007, just weeks after Craig was arrested for allegedly soliciting sex in an airport bathroom.

the addition of a heavyweight like Craig to the coal lobby serves as a reminder of just how difficult it can be to pass mine safety reform in the face of industry influence, even in the aftermath of the worst mining disaster in 40 years. Since 29 miners died in an explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia in April 2010, a bill that would further empower the Mine Safety and Health Administration to shut down dangerous mines and punish unsafe operators has languished in Congress. Now that more than a year and a half has passed, the window of opportunity may have already closed for meaningful reform, industry observers say.

"We knew at the very beginning that the further you get from the [Upper Big Branch] tragedy, the less likely it is to get something passed," says a senior Democratic aide. "The pay-to-play politics eventually comes into play. And that's exactly what happened."

The status quo may well be what Murray Energy and the coal lobby are hoping for. Since the Crandall Canyon disaster, congressional staffers who work closely on mine safety issues have come to know the firm's tough CEO, Robert Murray, simply as "Mr. Murray," and they consider him and other deep-pocketed coal operators a prime obstacle to stronger mining regulations.A big Republican donor, Murray feuded publicly with safety-minded Democrats who called for criminal prosecutions of Crandall Canyon managers after the tragedy. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Utah says the Crandall Canyon case is "ongoing," although no charges have been filed in more than four years.

Murray Energy has paid Craig's consultancy and lobby shop, New West Strategies, $200,000 this year to work on legislation surrounding mine safety as well as greenhouse gas emissions. When asked for details about the firm's work, Craig's partner and former chief of staff, Michael Ware, said, "I'm not going to talk to you at all." Murray Energy has so far spent nearly $400,000 on lobbying this year, according to the watchdog group Center for Responsive Politics.

rob Murray, vice president and son to the CEO, declined to talk in detail about Murray Energy'sstance on MSHA and mine safety reform. In an email, he said the company was working to "inform lawmakers of practical solutions to improve the working environment in mines," adding that "the overall health and safety of our employees is our number one priority."

At the time of the tragedy, Robert Murray blamed the mine collapse at Crandall Canyon on an earthquake -- an assertion challenged by MSHA, which levied more than $1 million in penalties against the mine. Similarly, officers at Massey Energy, the owner of Upper Big Branch, have attributed that disaster to a natural explosion, contrary to the findings of both an independent investigative panel and a team of MSHA investigators.

Two exhaustive reports produced on Massey have put the blame squarely on a corporate culture that put profits before workers' well-being. Investigators noted that the company routinely hid safety problems from inspectors and intimidated workers who spoke out about dangerous conditions. Managers went so far as to maintain two sets of safety books -- one that included documented dangers at the mine, and a separate sanitized version for inspectors to see. Alpha Natural Resources, Massey's new owner, has entered into a $210 million settlement over Massey's role in the disaster, though officials have left open the possibility of prosecuting individual Massey officers.

Cynical as it may sound, safety advocates note that the wake of a mining disaster is usually the best opportunity to reform mining law and MSHA, since public attention so rarely turns to such issues. Justin Feldman, worker health and safety advocate at Public Citizen, says he's disappointed but not shocked that nothing legislatively has been done. Feldman says he's actually spoken with congressional aides who wrongly believe a bill was passed after Upper Big Branch.

"We don't see any momentum on this issue," says Feldman. "The industry has survived this, in terms of not being subject to new regulations. ... When I talk to Republicans on this, the first they say is, 'Let's wait for the [next] report to come out.'"

Even piecemeal reforms have proven nearly impossible to get through the GOP-led House. For example, Republicans have twice tried to block a new rule aimed at reducing the number of miners who suffer and die from black lung disease. In September House Republicans tried to scuttle the rule, which would lower the amount of allowable coal dust in a mine's atmosphere, in a health-and-labor budget bill. And last week, as lawmakers scrambled to avoid a shutdown, Republicans put a rider in the budget bill that would simply delay implementation of the new rule by eight months, a move that the United Mine Workers of America said could cost lives.

Since Upper Big Branch, MSHA officials have been trying to clear the agency's infamous backlog of safety cases, which hovered around 70,000 as of the end of September.Many mine owners appeal their safety violations simply as a matter of course, allowing them to continue operating as the judicial process drags on. A 2008 congressional report found that Murray Energy, for instance, had enacted a "blanket policy of contesting all MSHA safety violations, regardless of the merits of the contest petition."

Led by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Reps. George Miller (D-Calif.) and Shelly Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), some lawmakers have sought to expand MSHA's limited subpoena power and boost civil and criminal penalties on operators who break the law. Those reforms have been kept at bay by the coal industry, which has spent at least $13 million on lobbying this year, and industry-friendly Republicans, who seem loath to impose any regulations on Big Coal. Earlier this year, an official with the industry group the National Mining Association (NMA), speaking as a guest of the GOP, went so far as to tell lawmakers at a mine safety hearing that the industry should be allowed to simply police itself.

"We're trying to be open-minded about it," NMA spokesman Luke Popovich tells HuffPost, speaking about MSHA reform. "We don't see the need for additional authority. MSHA has only started to use the authority it has that could improve mine safety."

As Upper Big Branch recedes further, reform advocates say it's doubtful they'll eventually overcome both a powerful lobby and anti-regulatory Republicans. Of course, veterans on the issue aren't exactly surprised to see their efforts fizzle. As Rep. Miller himself said earlier this year, "The sad thing is that nothing will happen until the next major disaster."

https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/trump-brings-back-coal-miner-jobs-deaths-soar

Newsweek

Coal miner Rodney Osborne was towards the end of a double shift at the Gateway Eagle Mine in West Virginia in June when the 32-year-old was crushed to death by a rotating drill. A subsequent investigation revealed that Osborne, who had been working at the Boone County mine for just five months, had not received adequate safety training on the device.

The state's junior senator, Shelley Moore Capito, said she was heartbroken by the news of Osborne's death, then reminded her constituents that "West Virginia coal miners like Rodney selflessly put so much on the line to ... power our state."

Osborne was not the only miner who paid the ultimate price. In all, 15 miners died since President Donald Trump took office in 2017—up from eight in all of 2016.

This is the dirty secret of Trump’s much-touted effort to help the coal industry. The president has been quick to celebrate the 771 workers that were hired in 2017, but the administration's push to support the dirtiest of fossil fuels has been accompanied by a surge in deaths of the workers who procure it. The 2017 death toll was the highest since 2014—when there were roughly 60,000 more miners at work in America.

Mining advocates put some of the blame on the president, whose support for mine owners has led to relaxed safety enforcement, scores of inexperienced new miners and inconsistent commitment to training programs and courses. In the meantime,  Republicans in the House want to cut mine safety budgets further, and Trump, who says he supports coal miners, has been silent on a Senate bill that would shore up miners' pensions.

“When you look at the Trump administration policies and his ratcheting back of regulations ... this administration has no moral compass about ethics,” said Joe Main, who ran the Mine Safety and Health Administration under President Barack Obama. “Companies now think we have a less aggressive sheriff in town.”

Trump’s support for coal is part of a larger economic vision of deregulation—one that he says is responsible for the stock market’s recent boom and higher gross domestic product.

“The stock market is way up (because) we took off restrictions and we took off regulations,” he said on January 16.

But for coal miners, those restrictions and regulations can be the difference between life and death.

A majority of the 15 victims were new to their job site and seven deaths involved miners with one year or less experience at the mine where they died, data show.

“There’s been a whole new generation of people hired into coal industry, younger workers who haven’t had the benefit of enough training,” said Phil Smith, spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America. “But companies are resistant to taking time to take them off production to train them.”

The results can be deadly—and not only for new workers.

In May, Luches “Big Lou” Rosser, 44, was traveling on an electric locomotive deep in a West Virginia mine when his head hit a steel beam, killing him. The official investigation into his death found that Rosser, a husband and father of three, hadn’t been properly trained on the machine. He knew how it worked, but was never briefed on safety procedures.

“Showing someone how to push a button isn’t a training,” said Smith.

In July, Andrew Oxenrider, a 28-year-old with seven years on the job, exited his Caterpillar D9L bulldozer on the slope of a refuse bank. Oxenrider had not been trained in proper parking procedures for that model, and the bulldozer rolled backwards, killing him before falling to the bottom of the embankment.

And then there's the case of Osborne, who disabled his drilling machine's emergency shutoff system so he could make a minor alignment adjustment—only to get pinned between the cutter head and the coal seam, suffering "fatal crushing injuries," state investigators revealed.

State officials issued seven citations to Rockwell Mining, including two that carry a $10,000 fine. But so far, the Trump administration's mine safety agency has only recommended education.

Coal mining is inherently dangerous, with zero margin for error even under the best conditions. The average height of a mine tunnel is about three and a half feet, so miners crawl or duck-walk while avoiding big, mobile electrical equipment. Even a small lapse in safety can be catastrophic.

“I have been to too many mine explosions and funerals,” said West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat. “Too many miners have died for us to get to where we are today. We can not go backwards on safety.”

Last year’s death count suggests a step back. For the first seven months of the Trump administration, the top position at MSHA remained vacant. Congressional aide and White House adviser Wayne Palmer was finally put in charge of the agency in late August, but he had no experience in mining or mine safety.

Under Palmer's oversight,  MSHA proposed changing language about when safety inspections must be done at metal and non-metal mines. Instead of mandating the inspection before laborers enter a mine, operators could do the check "as miners begin their work," a wording that allows mine owners to start a shift before an inspection, putting miners in potentially dangerous situations.

The National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association, an industry group that spent $300,000 to lobby for the rule change and featured former Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski as the keynote speaker at its annual convention, was pleased with the new language, writing that "it appears that MSHA is willing to listen to the industry."

In the fall, Trump finally appointed David Zatezalo, a retired coal mining executive, to run the Mine Safety and Health Administration, but Zatezalo has a questionable commitment to miners’ welfare, advocates say.

His Rhino Eastern Eagle mine in West Virginia, for example, was hit with multiple violations in 2010 and 2011. All together, Rhino mines have been issued more than $2.1 million in fines for 162 workplace safety or health violations since 2000.

Now Zatezalo runs an agency charged with creating training initiatives, monitoring accidents, and, most important, carrying out safety inspections at mines several times a year. Critics say he is a pawn of industry.

“He’s a former coal operator, he’s not a mine safety advocate,” said Tony Oppegard, a mine safety lawyer.

This week, Zatezalo told Newsweekthat the Trump Administration is committed to the health and safety of America’s miners. "At MSHA, our focus is on ensuring that every miner is able to return safely to their loved ones at the end of every shift," he said. "To ensure the health and safety of miners, MSHA will continue to conduct inspections, and vigorously emphasize safety enforcement, education and training."

Such inspections and training are mandated by federal laws, but miner advocates are not convinced that Zatezalo will aggressively enforce them.

“[Zatezalo] might call the district manager in Barbourville, Kentucky and tell them how he wants the agency to run,” said Oppegard. “Influential mine operators might also call MSHA directly and say, ‘Your inspector is giving me a hard time,’ the head would then call the district manager and say, ‘Lay off.’ That kind of stuff happens. It really does.”

Main, the former MSHA director, said it is likely to get worse.

“If the perception of the industry is these guys are backing off, it won’t play out well for safety,” he said. “Word gets around the industry, and you know what’s going to happen there.”

Smith already sees alarming changes at MSHA, such as emphasizing a more-lenient safety check system called “compliance assistance," which was a key program under President George W. Bush. If a compliance assistant visits a mine and notices a safety or health violation, he or she does not have the authority to issue a citation or fine, the way an official inspector would.

They’re essentially tourists in a mine, said Smith.

If such assistants see “something going on in a mine that’s bad or wrong, they can only ask the company to fix it,” he added. “The company can easily say, ‘No we don’t think it’s a problem’ and that’s the end of it. There’s no enforcement.”

MSHA responded to the recent surge in deaths by increasing the size of its compliance assistance plan, a voluntary program for mine operators. Advocates say compliance assistance is typically most popular with deregulation Republicans.

“You know one administration, a Democratic administration, is interested in enforcement and wants to do enforcement. And a Republican administration wants to do compliance assistance,” Celeste Monforton, a former MSHA official and occupational health researcher, told *Ohio Valley Resource* as mining deaths were on the rise last year.

MSHA still uses official inspectors to carry out its mandatory inspections of all underground mines four times a year and all surface mines twice a year, and compliance assistance programs existed under Democratic presidents, as well. But the Trump administration has further dulled its teeth.

In the past, for example, all compliance assistants were to be accompanied by miners' representatives, but that is no longer the case, Smith said.

Compliance assistance is “a complete waste of time,” added Oppegard. “You can directly link the reliance on this method of inspection with an increase in mining disasters and fatalities.”

Annual miner deaths did increase twice during the Bush administration and were higher than under his successor, Barack Obama, who, in 2009, brought total miner deaths down below 20 for the first time in American history.

Manchin expressed his own concerns, telling Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta in a letter in September that MSHA inspectors were being instructed to remove their Representative Status credentials. Without the credentials, inspectors are not allowed to issue violations or remove miners from unsafe conditions.

"By separating the MSHA inspector from his or her credentials, one is essentially removing the ability of that MSHA inspector to issue an order to remove miners from the unsafe area and issue a violation which, particularly in the event of an imminent danger, can prove perilous," Manchin wrote.

He also questioned why miners' representatives were no longer able to walk with compliance assistants. "This is particularly alarming because, no one is better suited to spot inconsistencies or unsafe conditions that the very people who work at the mine day in and day out," Manchin wrote.

In the midst of the current mine safety crisis, Congress has proposed to cut MSHA’s coal enforcement budget by $11 million or 7 percent in the next fiscal year, leaving the agency with its lowest budget since FY 2013. Trump originally proposed to leave MSHA’s budget largely untouched but to reduce staffing by 42 positions.

“The proposed budget cut is absolutely a move towards reducing the inspectors in the coal industry,” said Smith, adding that the plan will result in an agency staffed by “inexperienced inspectors.”

“It takes five years to take an inspector up to speed,” Main added. “These are things that are really important to the life of a miner.”

Main said he worries about long-term leadership trickling out of the agency. “I was struggling to keep the agency functioning with the budget we had. Any additional cuts would hamper its ability to keep working,” he said.

On-site injuries are only one aspect of the job. Sustained exposure to coal dust leads to a number of respiratory diseases, such as black lung disease, a progressive illness with no cure. More than 76,000 miners have died of black lung since 1968.

Last month, Trump announced that MSHA was reconsidering rules intended to protect miners from breathing in the dust that causes black lung. And in his first days as president, Trump eliminatedan Obama-era rule blocking coal companies from dumping waste into streams. Miner advocates say these rule changes and others are all about appeasing mine owners, not workers.

“They’re receiving a lot of complaints from coal operators that these rules are wasteful and useless, but that’s just false,” said Smith.

MSHA says it is still taking comments about these rules, which went into effect in 2014 and aim to lower the concentration of respirable coal mine dust in the air, but Oppegard believes there’s only one reason to revisit them: “To raise the amount of dust miners can breathe in up again or to create other loopholes where operators could violate the standard.”

Smith added that such air quality rules don't get in the way of industry profits and are simply necessary.

“All of these regulations exist because someone was killed at work,” he said. “All those laws and regulations are written in a dead miner’s blood.”

Manchin disagrees, claiming that there are just too many environmental rules. “Some of the stuff doesn’t make sense and makes it hard for people to do their job,” he said.

Manchin is most upset with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who he says refuses to fund the pensions of 117,000 retired coal miners and dependents, who are at risk of losing their retirement funds due to the declining coal industry.

A Senate bill has 21 co-sponsors, but McConnell won't move it and Trump hasn't pushed the issue, Manchin said.

“We’re not talking big numbers here,” said Manchin. “Most pensions top out at $500 or $600 each month.”

Manchin added that Trump has been a sympathetic ear on the issue, but has not acted. To Joe Main, that means Trump's rhetoric about caring for coal miners is empty.

“I don't think I’ve ever heard the president talk about this pension,” he said. “These are people who produced the energy for this country to grow, they’re owed healthcare and a darn pension.”

Trump’s efforts to prop up the coal industry are bucking decades of decline for the mineral, mostly due to a drop in global demand. Even with hundreds of new miners hired last year, the solar and wind industries still employed nearly three times as many people as the coal industry. Half of America’s coal-fired plants have shuttered since 2010 and since Trump took office at least 17 plants have announced they’ll be closing shop. Coal isn’t cost-competitive with cheaper natural gas and it faces new competition as the cost of renewable energy continues to decline.

Coal is a leading source of carbon emissions, and many nations are weaning themselves off the pollutant to fight climate change, even as officials in the United States deny some realities about global warming. Exports of coal fell 23 percent in 2015 and another 32 percent through the first half of 2016, though domestic production is slightly up, thanks to a growing economy under Trump.

“I’m the one that saved coal,” the president said in a year-end interview. “I’m the one that created jobs.”

But on the homefront, Trump’s call to end the “war on coal” appealed to his base: wealthy, anti-regulation industry leaders and blue-collar workers nostalgic for a past they likely never knew. Trump’s support for coal countered Hillary Clinton, who was widely misquoted during the campaign that she would intentionally “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

Trump carried eight of the top nine coal-mining states in the 2016 election

==

omg

sharply divided Senate committee on Wednesday advanced the Trump administration’s pick to run the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, even as new details emerge about the conduct of one of the companies where MSHA nominee David Zatezalo was an executive.

On a party-line 12-11 vote, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions consented to Zatezalo’s nomination and sent the matter to the full Senate. The committee’s 12 Republicans all voted to confirm Zatezalo. The 10 Democrats and one Independent all voted against confirmation.

Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., called Zatezalo “uniquely qualified for this role,” while the ranking minority member, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said Zatezalo had not convinced her that he would “stand up to President Trump as he continues to roll back worker protections.”

Zatezalo, 62, of Wheeling, is a mining engineer who started his career as a laborer for Consolidation Coal Co. He quickly moved into management, running the coal operations of American Electric Power, and then rising to the top of Rhino Resources.

Trump’s nomination of Zatezalo has been under scrutiny because of mining deaths that occurred at operations where Zatezalo was a mine manager, company official or corporate executive, and because, while Zatezalo was a top executive there, Rhino Resources was the subject of some of the toughest enforcement MSHA can levy.

Agency officials twice warned Rhino that one of its West Virginia mines was a safety scofflaw and took the unusual step of suing Rhino when company officials tipped off workers about an impending inspection.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., has said he will vote against confirming Zatezalo when the matter reaches the Senate floor.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito-R-W.Va., has not indicated how she plans to vote. Neither Manchin nor Capito serves on the Senate HELP Committee that advanced Zatezalo’s nomination. The Senate currently has 52 Republicans, 46 Democrats and two Independents, both of whom caucus with the Democrats.

The vote on Wednesday came just hours after the nonprofit news organization ProPublica posted a story that outlined more details of a case in which Rhino’s Rhino Eastern LLC arm was sued by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after the agency concluded that the company “subjected a mine foreman to pervasive national origin discrimination and retaliated against him for his opposition to the harassment.”

After hiring Michael Jagodzinski as a mine foreman in May 2011, Rhino and its supervisors and other employees subjected Jagodzinski to taunts and slurs based on his Polish ancestry, the EEOC lawsuit alleged. The company allowed graffiti with ethnic and sexual slurs to be displayed on mine walls and elsewhere in the workplace, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit said that one employee took Jagodzinski’s cellphone without his permission and used it to take a photo of his own testicles.

Despite Jagodzinski’s complaints about this hostile work environment, Rhino failed to prevent or correct the harassment, the EEOC said. Instead, the company falsely accused Jagodzinski of sexual harassment as a pretext to firing him in March 2012, the EEOC lawsuit said.

The incidents alleged by the EEOC occurred while Zatezalo was a top Rhino official, and court records indicate that the government planned to take a sworn statement from Zatezalo as part of the case.

The lawsuit itself was filed in late September 2014, about two months before Zatezalo left the company. In January 2016, U.S. District Judge Irene Berger approved a settlement through which Rhino would pay $62,000 and, under a five-year consent decree implement a new policy prohibiting harassment, discrimination and retaliation.

The EEOC lawsuit was mentioned by Murray during an opening statement at Zatezalo’s Oct. 4 confirmation hearing. News releases were issued by the EEOC about the filing of the lawsuit and the settlement of the case.

==

CHAO

mcconnell staffers put in charge (of slurry spill?)

==

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mine_Safety_and_Health_Administration

The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) is an agency of the United States Department of Labor which administers the provisions of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 (Mine Act) to enforce compliance with mandatory safety and health standards as a means to eliminate fatal accidents, to reduce the frequency and severity of nonfatal accidents, to minimize health hazards, and to promote improved safety and health conditions in the nation's mines. MSHA carries out the mandates of the Mine Act at all mining and mineral processing operations in the United States, regardless of size, number of employees, commodity mined, or method of extraction. Currently, Richard Stickler is the head of the MSHA and is thus an Assistant Secretary of the United States Department of Labor.^[1]

MSHA is divided into several subdivisions under the office of the assistant secretary for mine safety and health. The coal mine safety and health division is divided into 11 districts covering coal mining in different portions of the United States. The metal-nonmetal mine safety and health division covers 6 regions of the United States.^[2]

For details on the April 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia see Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster.

History

In 1891, the United States Congress passed the first federal statute governing mine safety. The 1891 law was relatively modest legislation that applied only to mines in U.S. territories, and, among other things, established minimum ventilation requirements at underground coal mines and prohibited operators from employing children under 12 years of age.^[3]

After the loss of more than 1000 workers from 1907-1909 in mining disasters, such as the Monongah Mining Disaster, the Progressive Movement pushed for governmental regulations to improve working conditions in the mines. Mine operators hoped to stave off this government regulatory control by the implementation of their own safety practices.However Congress was pressured in 1910 to establish the US Bureau of Mines, an agency of the Department of Interior, to further research mine safety problems and conduct mine inspections. The Bureau did help establish some safety standards, but had little enforcement power to correct infractions.^[4] The Bureau was charged with the responsibility to conduct research and to reduce accidents in the coal mining industry, but was given no inspection authority until 1941, when Congress empowered federal inspectors to enter mines. In 1947, Congress authorized the formulation of the first code of federal regulations for mine safety.^[3]

The Federal Coal Mine Safety Act of 1952 provided for annual inspections in certain underground coal mines, and gave the Bureau limited enforcement authority, including power to issue violation notices and imminent danger withdrawal orders. The 1952 Act also authorized the assessment of civil penalties against mine operators for noncompliance with withdrawal orders or for refusing to give inspectors access to mine property, although no provision was made for monetary penalties for noncompliance with the safety provisions. In 1966, Congress extended coverage of the 1952 Coal Act to all underground coal mines.^[3]

The first federal statute directly regulating non-coal mines did not appear until the passage of the Federal Metal and Nonmetallic Mine Safety Act of 1966. The 1966 Act provided for the promulgation of standards, many of which were advisory, and for inspections and investigations; however, its enforcement authority was minimal.^[3]

The Coal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1969, generally referred to as the Coal Act, was more comprehensive and had more enforcement power than previous federal legislation governing the mining industry.The Coal Act included surface as well as underground coal mines within its scope, required two annual inspections of every surface coal mine and four at every underground coal mine, and dramatically increased federal enforcement powers in coal mines. The Coal Act also required monetary penalties for all violations, albeit not large, and established criminal penalties for knowing and willful violations. The safety standards for all coal mines were strengthened, and health standards were adopted. The Coal Act included specific procedures for the development of improved mandatory health and safety standards, and provided compensation for miners who were totally and permanently disabled by the progressive respiratory disease caused by the inhalation of fine coal dust, known as pneumoconiosis, or "black lung".^[3]

In 1973, the Secretary of the Interior, through administrative action, created the Mining Enforcement and Safety Administration (MESA) as a new departmental agency separate from the Bureau of Mines. MESA assumed the safety and health enforcement functions formerly carried out by the Bureau to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest between the enforcement of mine safety and health standards and the Bureau's responsibilities for mineral resource development. (MESA was the predecessor organization to MSHA, prior to March 9, 1978.)^[3]

Congress passed the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977, the legislation which currently governs MSHA's activities. The Mine Act amended the 1969 Coal Act in a number of significant ways, and consolidated all federal health and safety regulations of the mining industry, coal as well as non-coal mining, under a single statutory scheme. The Mine Act strengthened and expanded the rights of miners, and enhanced the protection of miners from retaliation for exercising such rights.Mining fatalities dropped sharply under the Mine Act from 272 in 1977 to 22 year to date(July 17, 2007). The Mine Act also transferred responsibility for carrying out its mandates from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Labor, and named the new agency the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). Additionally, the Mine Act established the independent Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission to provide for independent review of the majority of MSHA's enforcement actions.^[3]

Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977

Mining is regulated under the federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 by MSHA, which employs nearly one safety inspector for every four coal mines. Underground coal mines are thoroughly inspected at least four times annually by MSHA inspectors. In addition, miners can report violations, and request additional inspections. Miners with such concerns for their work safety cannot be penalized with any threat to the loss of employment.^[5]

Immediately reportable accidents and injuries are:^[5]

1. A death of an individual at a mine;
2. An injury to an individual at a mine which has a reasonable potential to cause death;
3. An entrapment of an individual for more than thirty minutes;
4. An unplanned inundation of a mine by a liquid or gas;
5. An unplanned ignition or explosion of gas or dust;
6. An unplanned mine fire not extinguished within 30 minutes of discovery;
7. An unplanned ignition or explosion of a blasting agent or an explosive;
8. An unplanned roof fall at or above the anchorage zone in active workings where roof bolts are in use; or, an unplanned roof or rib fall in active workings that impairs ventilation or impedes passage;
9. A coal or rock outburst that causes withdrawal of miners or which disrupts regular mining activity for more than one hour;
10. An unstable condition at an impoundment, refuse pile, or culm bank which requires emergency action in order to prevent failure, or which causes individuals to evacuate an area; or, failure of an impoundment, refuse pile or culm bank;
11. Damage to hoisting equipment in a shaft or slope which endangers an individual or which interferes with use of the equipment for more than thirty minutes; and
12. An event at a mine which causes death or bodily injury to an individual not at the mine at the time the event occurs.

Additionally, the Mine Safety and Health Act authorizes the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to develop recommendations for mine health standards for the Mine Safety and Health Administration; administer a medical surveillance program for miners, including chest X-rays to detect pneumoconiosos (black lung disease) in coal miners; conduct on-site investigations in mines; and test and certify personal protective equipment and hazard-measurement instruments.^[6]

Statistical analyses performed by the U.S. Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) show that between 1990 and 2004, the industry cut the rate of injuries (a measure comparing the rate of incidents to overall number of employees or hours worked) by more than half and fatalities by two-thirds following three prior decades of steady improvement.^[7]

MSHA and the Gingrich Congress

When Newt Gingrich and the Republicans took over the House of Representatives in 1995, among their government streamlining proposals was to eliminate MSHA. Mine safety duties would be given instead to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, weakening the greater protections federal law gives to miners. According to coal journalist Ken Ward Jr.: "[T]op Labor Department officials spent years fighting the change. They eventually won, but the damage to their agenda — including black lung reforms — was significant." Efforts to increase coal dust regulations and improve monitoring have since been consistently defeated, resulting in cases of black lung among American coal miners doubling from 2000 to 2012.^[8]

MSHA and George W. Bush

The Martin County Sludge Spill occurred after midnight on October 11, 2000 when the bottom of a coal sludge impoundment owned by Massey Energy in Martin County, Kentucky, broke into an abandoned underground mine below. The slurry came out of the mine openings, sending an estimated 306 million gallons (1.16 billion liters) of sludge down two tributaries of the Tug Fork River. By morning, Wolf Creek was oozing with the black waste; on Coldwater Fork, a ten-foot (3 m) wide stream became a 100-yard (91 m) expanse of thick sludge.^[9] Massey CEO Don Blankenship, who is also a board member of the US Chamber of Commerce, has spent millions of dollars to support judicial and state political campaigns, including $3M to buy a West Virginia state Supreme Court justice. Nearly another $400,000 was disbursed by Massey's employees, including Blankenship.^[10]

Jack Spadaro, then the head of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy, investigated the spill and reported negligence on the part of Martin County Coal, a subsidiary of coal giant Massey Energy, and lax enforcement by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. According to Spadaro, the slurry pond had a spill in 1994 and Massey knew another break was nearly inevitable.^[11] Spadaro’s former boss at Mine Safety, Davitt McAteer, defended Spadaro, telling 60 Minutes that major coal sludge fatalities are avoided only "by the grace of God," and that officials expected a report that recommended violations, fines, and possible criminal charges.^[11] After Bush took office McAteer was replaced. Spadaro was accused of abusing his authority, and was reassigned to a Pittsburgh office four hours from his home. He resigned.^[11]

During his terms, former President George W. Bush cut funding for mine safety enforcement by $15 million and replaced MSHA officials, such as Davitt McAteer, with representatives of corporate interests. In 2002, Bush named former Massey Energy official Stanley Suboleski to the MSHA review commission that decides all legal matters under the Federal Mine Act. David Lauriski, the former head of MSHA, spent 30 years as an executive in the mining industry before being tapped to head the agency, and resigned in 2005 to work for a mine-industry consulting company. The next head of MSHA Richard Stickler, appointed by Bush in September 2006, was a former manager of Beth Energy mines. The Bush administration also cut 170 positions from MSHA.^[12]

In 2010, Jeff Duncan was made MSHA Acting Chief of Staff. Duncan is the one who put Spadaro on administrative leave while Spadaro was looking into criminal negligence involving Massey in the Martin County sludge spill.^[13]

MINER Act

In 2006, federal regulators moved to overhaul mine safety laws for the first time in over three decades with Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act of 2006, also known as the MINER Act. The Act was partly in response to thedeaths of 19 miners in a series of accidents in West Virginia and Kentucky, including the Aracoma mine that brought criminal charges against a subsidiary of Massey.^[14]

Defeat of the S-MINER Act

In June of 2007, Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee that oversees the MSHA, introduced the Supplemental Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act (S-MINER) Act, which would have supplemented existing mining provisions in the Federal Mine Act to require: "(1) emergency response plans to incorporate new technology; (2) the Secretary of Labor to require the installation of rescue chambers in underground coal mines; and (3) accident response plans to provide for the maintenance of refuges." The House Committee on Education and Labor issued a report stating: "The S-MINER Act aims to prevent disasters and, in cases where disasters do occur, to improve emergency response. It also aims to reduce long-term health risks facing miners, such as black lung." Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) explained the bill was necessary because the 2006 MINER Act provisions had not been effectively enforced: "“So far, I am concerned that the slow pace of reform is leaving America's miners at risk. We've made progress. But [the Mine Safety & Health Administration (MSHA)] has not moved aggressively to implement all of the provisions of the MINER Act."”^[10]

Two months after introduction of the bill, six miners died in the Crandall Canyon mining disaster in Utah. Regardless, the mining industry continued to oppose the bill. Vice President for Safety, Health and Human Resources of the National Mining Association, which had initially supported the reforms,^[15] testified before the committee that the "additional layers of statutory requirements at this time will undermine the progress that has been made on miner training and other vital objectives of the act. It is premature to consider imposing further legislation before the full impact of the original MINER Act can be comprehensively evaluated." Further opposition cited concerns about energy independence and job losses, such as Congressman Don Young of Alaska who argued, "If this bill was to become law, mines will be shut down. They will be shut down." The Bush Administration also strongly opposed the bill, claiming that "the regulatory mandates in the S-MINER bill would weaken several existing regulations and overturn regulatory processes that were required by the MINER Act and are ongoing."^[10]

The House passed the S-MINER Act in January 2008 but the bill died in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. The HELP Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety, chaired by Sen. Murray, met to consider the bill and only three members were present for the hearing. No further action was taken on the bill. For the House vote, 25 House Democrats and nearly all House Republicans voted against the bill. Analysis by maplight, based upon the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets Open Data found that, on average, House opponents received 103 percent more money from mining interests than House members voting Yes (an average of $12,526 to each member voting No, $6,174 to each voting Yes), while Democrats voting No received 197 percent more money from mining interests than their colleagues voting Yes (an average of $16,314 to each Democrat voting No, $5,489 to each voting Yes). Members of the Senate HELP Committee received 122 percent more from the mining interests than from the unions.^[10]

Contributions (2003-2008) from Interest Groups that Supported and Opposed the S-MINER Act to Members of the Senate HELP Committee in the 110th Congress:^[10]

Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster

On April 5, 2010, an explosion at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia killed 29 miners, with two hospitalized.^[16] The mine had a history of MSHA safety violations, including as recently as 2010 for failing to control coal dust; improperly planning to ventilate the mine of dust and the combustible gas methane; inadequate protection from roof falls; failing to maintain proper escapeways; and allowing the accumulation of combustible materials.^[17][18]

Despite the history of MSHA violations at the mine, a "talking points" memo circulated by MSHA during the week of the disaster stated that, "MSHA does not have the authority to permanently close or shut down a mine based upon a set number of violations, or any other criteria."^[19]

June 2010 Labor Department Report on MSHA Practices

After the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster, California Democrat and chairman of the House Labor Committee George Miller said he planned to introduce changes to mine health and safety laws.Miller and other lawmakers sought an investigation into MSHA after the April 2010 disclosure that a computer error prevented MSHA from notifying Massey that the Upper Big Branch mine may be placed under a so-called “pattern of violations” enforcement.On June 23, 2010, the Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General issued a report finding that the U.S. mine safety regulator has failed to subject mines with repeated violations to the “enhanced oversight” required when an operator shows disregard for miner health. The report noted that MSHA in 2009 restricted the list of mines with recurring violations because of resource limits, removing 10 for reasons that do not appear to be appropriate. The department asked MSHA to immediately re-evaluate the 10 mines removed from the 2009 list. Miller said the report raises questions about adequate funding for MSHA’s regional offices to enforce the law.^[20]

On June 23, 2010, Massey sued MSHA over requirements for ventilation at the West Virginia Upper Big Branch Mine mine. The company said MSHA had rejected a system that would have aided workers, and instead forced installation of a complex ventilation system in an area where miners were working when the explosion occurred.^[21]

Sep. 27, 2010: Massey challenge to MSHA dismissed

On September 27, 2010, administrative law judge ALJ Margaret A. Miller with the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission ruled in favor of the MSHA in a legal challenge filed in June 2010 by Massey Energy’s Performance Coal. The company had challenged MSHA’s protocol guidelines in the underground accident investigation of the Upper Big Branch Mine, in which the agency prohibited Massey Energy investigators from using cameras, collecting evidence, mapping, and conducting sampling. In her ruling, Miller held that MSHA did not abuse its discretion in adopting the protocols and that the protocols “are rationally connected to safely conducting the accident investigation.” MSHA, along with West Virginia’s Office of Miners’ Health Safety and Training, had outlined specific protocols in June to ensure preservation of evidence. The agency said it considered input from all entities with an interest in the investigation, including Performance Coal, and that it modified those protocols to accommodate a number of the company’s requests.^[22]

June 2010: Democrats Draft Measure to Tighten Coal-Mine Safety

In June 2010, Democrats in Congress began drafting legislation that would make it easier to shut mines with repeated safety violations, such as the Massey Energy coal mine, where 29 miners died in an April explosion. Regulators are seeking to change a system in which Massey and other mining companies appeal safety violations to delay or avoid safety enforcement actions. The bill would boost penalties for some types of violations and add protections for whistleblowers who report safety lapses, as the Massey Upper Big Branch Mine mine had been cited for deficiencies in the ventilation system and for buildups of combustible coal dust before the explosion. The measure would expand subpoena powers of the Mine Safety and Health Administration and broaden pay protections for miners who are out of work when violations lead to a mine being shut. The bill would also revamp the process for declaring that a mine had a pattern of violations, which subject the operator to stepped-up enforcement. It would also require mine operators to pay penalties in a timely manner, and give MSHA the power to subpoena documents and testimony. Under the proposed legislation, the mine-safety agency could seek a court order to close a mine when there is a continuing threat to the health and safety of miners. The agency could also require more training of miners in unsafe mines.^[21]

Senate Republicans said they were disappointed Democrats drafted a measure without bipartisan support and said achieving a consensus will be difficult. They faulted the proposal for adding power to agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.^[21]

August 2010: MSHA issues guidelines for industry compliance with ventilation regulations

On August 16, 2010, the MSHS announced that "as a result of troubling testimony heard in a recent field hearing regarding the explosion of Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine", the agency was releasing four new program information bulletins (PIBs) pertaining to ventilation issues in underground coal mines, "to remind mine operators, miners' representatives, MSHA enforcement personnel, and other interested parties about mandatory coal mine safety standards relative to inadequate ventilation, intentional changes in the mine's ventilation system, maintaining face ventilation control devices, and maintaining methane monitors in permissible and proper operating condition for mining equipment."^[23]

According to MSHA, providing adequate ventilation in an underground mine is the principal means of ensuring that flammable, explosive, noxious and harmful gases, dusts, smoke, and fumes are continuously diluted, rendered harmless, and carried away: "Insufficient air quantity allows methane and dust to accumulate, potentially resulting in a mine fire or explosion. Dust accumulations can also cause miners to be exposed to harmful levels of respirable dust, which can lead to black lung." The guidance covers intentional changes to a mine's ventilation system and working face ventilation controls, reinforces the maintenance of methane monitors, and reiterates the prohibition on tampering with methane monitors.^[23]

September 21, 2010: New compliance rules on coal dust issued

On September 21, 2010, MSHA director Joe Main announced plans to require underground mines to do more to control explosive coal dust under an emergency rule. The announcement came amid mounting evidence that coal dust played a role in the Upper Big Branch mine explosion in April. The change will raise to 80 percent the amount of pulverized stone or other inert material mines use to dilute coal dust in air intake tunnels, the same amount already required in return tunnels. Currently intakes need just 65 percent. Main says MSHA's change is based on federal research that shows decreasing the amount of coal dust in air intakes can prevent explosions.^[24]

March 2011: MSHA won't release documents related to previous Massey methane explosions

The Charleston Gazette has contacted the MSHA for records of its actions after two significant “methane outbursts” at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine in 2003 and 2004. Federal and state investigators have been looking at those incidents as part of their probe of the April 5, 2010, explosion that killed 29 miners at Upper Big Branch. On March 10, 2011, MSHA sent a two-page letter, in which the agency mostly denied the FOIA request — refusing to release roughly two-thirds of the records concerning those incidents. MSHA did, however, provide 149 pages of records mostly consisting of citations — and 13 pages consisting of the reports on the 2003 and 2004 incidents that were already obtained from other sources — but no records that explain what, if any, follow up was done by either Massey or MSHA to ensure no repeats of the methane incidents. MSHA withheld 272 pages of records, citing Exemption 7 of the federal Freedom of Information Act, meant to protect records that, if released, might interfere with ongoing law enforcement proceedings.^[25]

November 2010: Injunction Against Massey for Freedom Mine Violations

In November 2010, the U.S. Department of Labor filed a preliminary injunction in U.S. District Court against Massey Energy for its perpetual mine violations at its Freedom Mine No. 1 in Pike County, Kentucky. The action, which is the toughest enforcement action available to federal regulators, would shut down the mine until the company addresses safety hazards and demonstrates it can operate the mine safely. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Kentucky, cited nearly 2,000 safety violations since mid-2008, including a deadly mine explosion in early 2010. The suit said that six roof falls occurred at the mine since Aug. 11, 2010.^[26]

The Freedom Mine employs about 130 miners and was cited for safety violations more than 700 times in 2010 alone.^[27]

On December 1, 2010, Massey Energy said it had idled the Freedom Mine amid increased regulatory scrutiny. The Freedom Mine No. 1 is one of three Massey-operated mines the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration had listed as having a pattern of safety violations, opening them up to greater oversight and potential closure if problems aren't fixed. The other two mines listed by MSHA as having a pattern of safety violations were Massey's Upper Big Branch Mine and the Ruby Energy Mine, also in West Virginia.^[26]

In January 2011, the Labor Department made an agreement with Massey that the Freedom mine's most senior managers must be directly involved in safety procedures and are personally responsible for violations. Shutdowns and fixes are to be immediate when unsafe conditions are spotted.

January 2011: MSHA proposes changes to regulation for pattern of violations

In January 2011, the MSHA submitted proposed changes to the Agency’s existing regulation for pattern of violations (POV): "MSHA has determined that the existing regulation does not adequately achieve the intent of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 (Mine Act) that the POV provision be used to address operators who have demonstrated a disregard for the safety and health of miners. Congress included the POV provision in the Mine Act so that operators would manage safety and health conditions at mines and find and fix the root causes of significant and substantial (S&S) violations to protect the safety and health of miners. The proposal would simplify the existing POV criteria, improve consistency in applying the POV criteria, and more adequately achieve the statutory intent. It would also encourage chronic violators to comply with the Mine Act and MSHA’s safety and health standards" (p. 1).

According to journalist Ken Ward Jr., a comparison of the proposal with MSHA’s existing part 104 rules indicates three major changes:^[28]

• Do away with the “warning letter” operators now receive indicating that have a “potential pattern of violations” and move directly to issuing pattern notices to operators.
• Require MSHA to conduct POV screenings twice a year. Current rules require that screening only once per year.
• Eliminate the requirement that MSHA consider only violations that have become final orders of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission after any company appeals.

April 2011: MSHA issues pattern of violations to two mines

On April 12, 2011, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration announced that it had issued a notice of a pattern of violations to two coal mining operations under Section 104(e) of the federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977: Bledsoe Coal Corp.’s Abner Branch Rider Mine in Leslie County, Ky., and The New West Virginia Mining Co.’s Apache Mine in McDowell County, W.Va.^[29]

Contact Details

Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA)

1100 Wilson Boulevard, 21st Floor

Arlington, VA 22209-3939

Phone: (202) 693-9400

Fax-on-demand: (202) 693-9401

Website: http://www.msha.gov/

Articles & resources

SourceWatch resources

• Coal mining accidents
• Monongah Mining Disaster
• Health effects of coal
• Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster
• Monongah Mining Disaster
• Aracoma Alma Mine accident
• Sago Mine Disaster
• Longwall mining

References

1. ↑ "MSHA Mission" Mine Safety and Health Administration Website, accessed November 2009
2. ↑ "MSHA Organizational Chart" Mine Safety and Health Administration Website, accessed November 2009
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6} "History of Mine Safety and Health Legislation" Mine Safety and Health Administration Website, accessed November 2009
4. ↑ "Monongah Mining Disaster" Boise State Website, accessed November 2009
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1} "Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977" U.S. Department of Labor Website, accessed November 2009
6. ↑ "About NIOSH" United States National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, accessed November 2009
7. ↑ "Historical Data on Mine Disasters in the United States" United States Department of Labor Website, accessed November 2009
8. ↑ Stephen Lacey, "Investigation: As Black Lung Cases Doubled In The Last Decade, The Coal Industry Fought New Health Protections," Think Progress, July 9, 2012.
9. ↑ "Sludge" Sludge Website, accessed November 2009
10. ↑ ^{10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4} Emily Calhoun,"Mining Industry Invests in Politicians; Stopped Mine Safety Laws" MapLight.org, April 12, 2010.
11. ↑ ^{11.0 11.1 11.2} Rita Price,"Still buried in SLUDGE" The Columbus Dispatch, October 11, 2004
12. ↑ "Whistleblower Warns the Bush Administration Is Cutting Back Mining Safety Regulations" Democracy Now, January 5, 2006.
13. ↑ "Whistleblower speaks out against Massey" EarthBeat Radio, July 20, 2010.
14. ↑ Ian Urbina,"Rescue Suspended at Mine as Death Toll Reaches 25" The New York Times, April 6, 2010.
15. ↑ Jim Snyder, "Congress to probe mine explosion", The Hill, April 6, 2010.
16. ↑ Massey Energy, "Update on Rescue Efforts From Massey Energy", Media Release, April 10, 2010.
17. ↑ Jeff Biggers,"What Killed the Miners? Profits Over Safety?", Huffington Post, April 6, 2010.
18. ↑ James Melkle,"US mine explosion leaves 25 dead: Four miners still missing after blast at West Virginia plant" The Guardian, April 6, 2010.
19. ↑ Jeff Biggers,"Moment of Silence @ 3:30pm EST: President Obama Must End 200 Years of Regulated Manslaughter in the Coalfields" Huffington Post, April 12, 2010.
20. ↑ Holly Rosenkrantz, "Safety Agency Faulted for Limiting Oversight of U.S. Coal Mines" Bloomberg BusinessWeek, June 23, 2010.
21. ↑ ^{21.0 21.1 21.2} Holly Rosenkrantz, "Democrats Draft Measure to Tighten Coal-Mine Safety" Bloomberg, June 29, 2010.
22. ↑ "MSHA Wins Ruling in Massey Energy Case" Rock Products, Sep. 27, 2010.
23. ↑ ^{23.0 23.1} "MSHA issues guidelines for industry compliance with ventilation regulations" MSHA, August 16, 2010.
24. ↑ Tim Huber, "MSHA announces emergency coal dust rule" Washington Explorer, Sep. 21, 2010.
25. ↑ Ken Ward Jr., "MSHA secrecy: Joe Main won’t release records about Upper Big Branch ‘methane outbusts’" Charleston gazette, March 11, 2011.
26. ↑ ^{26.0 26.1} Matt Whittaker, "Massey Idles Mine Amid Regulatory Scrutiny" Wall Street Journal, Dec. 1, 2010.
27. ↑ "Labor Dept. Asks Court To Close Massey Mine In Ky." Howard Berkes & Robert Benincasa, National Public Radio, November 3, 2010.
28. ↑ Ken Ward Jr., "MSHA proposes ‘pattern of violations’ changes" Coal Tattoo, Jan. 31, 2011.
29. ↑ Ken Ward Jr., "MSHA puts two mines on ‘pattern of violations’" Coal Tattoo, April 12, 2011.

Wikipedia also has an article on Mine Safety and Health Administration. This article may use content from the Wikipedia article under the terms of the GFDL.

Categories:

• Coal Issues
• Energy
• Government agencies (US)
• Environment
• Environmental issues of coal
• Coal mining accidents

 ===

1. Center for Science and Democracy
2. Promoting Scientific Integrity

Coal Slurry Spill Investigation Suppressed

Political interference, whistleblower retaliation, and lack of transparency at the Mine Safety and Health Administration

NOTE: The following is one of a series of case studies produced by the Union of Concerned Scientists' Scientific Integrity Program between 2004 and 2010 to document the abuses highlighted in our 2004 report,Scientific Integrity in Policy Making.

In January 2001, incoming Bush administration political appointees pressured investigators at the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to prematurely wrap up an ongoing investigation into the causes of the massive October 2000 coal slurry spill in Martin County, Kentucky.^1,2 Mining engineer and whistleblower Jack Spadaro further alleged that Bush political appointees influenced the content of the final MSHA report and retaliated against him for going public with his claims.³ Additionally, MSHA withheld mine safety data from public view during the Bush administration, a policy reversal that undermined accountability and mine safety.

MSHA Initial Investigation of Coal Slurry Spill Begins

On October 11th, 2000, thick liquid coal processing waste contained in a Martin County Coal Corporation (MCCC) reservoir broke through the reservoir wall into an underground mine shaft, eventually dumping more than 300 million gallons of toxic sludge⁴ into the area’s rivers.⁵ Although there was no loss of human life, the spill resulted in the loss of aquatic life, stream degradation, property damage and drinking water contamination.⁶ MSHA, a branch of the Department of Labor (DOL) in charge of enforcing mine safety and health standards, opened an investigation into the incident.⁷

Spadaro, an engineer with experience in coal slurry spills and then the superintendent of MSHA’s training facility, was part of the MSHA team charged with investigating the accident. The investigation team began to discover that some federal regulators and MCCC employees knew beforehand that a coal slurry spill was possible.⁸

Following an earlier spill from the same Martin County reservoir in 1994, an MSHA engineer made nine recommendations to MCCC and MSHA regulators in a memorandum⁹ that was obtained by Salon through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The memo indicated that MCCC should not be allowed to raise the level of the coal slurry reservoir without enacting the engineer’s recommendations.¹⁰

After the 2000 spill, MSHA’s engineering division head Mark Skiles wrote a memorandum (termed ‘the Skiles memo’) informing the spill investigation team that the local area MSHA office did not follow up on the 1994 recommended changes to the reservoir.¹¹ According to Spadaro, MSHA district officials even allowed MCCC to increase the level of the reservoir by 80 feet¹² after the 1994 incident without enforcing the needed changes.¹³ Based upon testimony from a consulting engineer, the investigation team also discovered that MCCC executives were aware of the continuing problems with the Martin County reservoir after the 1994 spill.¹⁴

Political Interference in the Accident Investigation

The investigation team was in the process of collecting evidence that could have led to multiple serious citations against MCCC and its parent company, Massey Energy, when the incoming Bush administration cut the investigation short in early 2001.¹⁵ Incoming Bush administration officials replaced Tony Oppegard with Tim Thompson[mcconnell staffer?  nope rejaric sp] as the Martin County spill investigation team leader.¹⁶

Thompson told the team to finish interviewing and begin drafting the report.¹⁷ The number of interviews the team had left to conduct was pared down from approximately thirty or forty to six.¹⁸ Before the change in leadership, the team was planning on citing MCCC for eight federal violations, with three classified as “willful and negligent.”¹⁹ MCCC was cited for only two violations in the final report, one of which was later dropped.²⁰ The final $55,000 fine MCCC paid to the federal government paled in comparison to the $3.25 million in penalties in damages that the coal company paid to the state of Kentucky.²¹

The new head of MSHA, David Lauriski, was a former mining executive and other top appointees were connected to the mining industry as well.²² According to Spadaro, pressure from Bush’s political appointees resulted in a watered down final accident investigation report.²³ Spadaro and some members of the investigation team, interviewed by Salon on condition of anonymity, also believe that MSHA officials attempted to influence and change the Skiles memo.²⁴ Spadaro refused to sign the final report, resigned from the investigation team in April 2001, and filed multiple complaints with the DOL’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) stating that the Bush administration officials had interfered with the accident investigation.²⁵

In response to Spadaro’s complaint, the OIG issued a report in 2002 concluding that “none of the allegations brought forward by Mr. Spadaro were substantiated.”²⁶ Spadaro maintains that the report’s conclusion is false.²⁷ A copy of the OIG report was obtained by Ellen Smith, owner and editor of the newsletter Mine Safety and Health News, through a FOIA request. Over fifty percent of the OIG report is redacted.²⁸

Although entire pages are missing, the OIG report provides some insights into the accident investigation. At least one investigation team member initially did not want to sign the final report due to being “left out of conference calls concerning citations,” but during a conference call with Lauriski and others, the team member agreed to sign.²⁹ The report recognizes that “the process of determining appropriate citations was contentious.”³⁰ Further, the changes in the number of federal violations “were not reached unanimously, but a majority of participants did agree on each change to the list.”³¹

A particularly contentious citation that was not included in the final report involved an MCCC mapping discrepancy.³² MCCC allegedly misrepresented the thickness of a barrier wall between the impoundment and the abandoned mine shaft below in plans provided to MSHA for the re-opening of the impoundment after the 1994 spill.³³ During the 2000 accident investigation the investigation team discovered that the barrier wall was much thinner than MSHA would have required.³⁴ In an interview with Washington Monthly, an anonymous team member stated that Thompson’s fight against the inclusion of the mapping discrepancy citation “looked like he was trying to protect the coal company.”³⁵

The OIG report goes on to describe how four team members met with Thompson to sign the final report. At first, Thompson only provided the signature page, and the four team members refused to sign without seeing the full report. The team members expressed concern that Lauriski and Thompson had denied them access to a shared computer drive containing information about the accident investigation. After a conference call with Lauriski, the team members were provided with a full copy of the report. They signed after making a few minor changes.³⁶ One anonymous investigator stated that “I didn’t think it would be a good career move not to [sign].”³⁷

Additionally, the OIG report discusses the “District Response” memo, a memo written by the district MSHA office in response to the Skiles memo’s allegations that the MSHA district office turned a blind eye to the MSHA engineer’s recommendations for the reservoir following the 1994 spill.³⁸ The OIG report states that “the team members had concerns regarding the truthfulness... of the ‘District Response’ memo.”³⁹ Both Spadaro and some members of the investigation team believe that the “District Response” memo was fictitious and back-dated to 2000.⁴⁰ The OIG report only acknowledges the memo’s existence; the two pages following the initial description of the memo are redacted.⁴¹

Spadaro believes the investigation was suppressed for two main reasons. Bush’s nominee for Secretary of Labor was Elaine Chao. Her husband, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), had just received a major campaign contribution through the Republican Senatorial Committee from Massey Energy.⁴² Spadaro alleges that Bush’s new political appointees were influencing the investigation in order to protect Massey Energy.⁴³ Because the district MSHA office allegedly did not enforce the needed changes to the Martin County reservoir after the 1994 incident, top administrators within MSHA were also protecting MSHA from culpability.⁴⁴

Whistleblower Retaliation

In October 2003, Spadaro was fired. After filing a complaint with a federal agency that handles whistleblower complaints, he was brought back, put on administrative leave, and then demoted. The government charged that he had abused his authority, misused government credit cards and failed to follow procedures.⁴⁵ He believes these charges were in retaliation for speaking out against political interference within MSHA.⁴⁶ Spadaro denied the charges and filed a lawsuit against the government. After being re-instated to his original position within MSHA, as a result of an agreement outside of court between lawyers, he eventually resigned.⁴⁷

Linc Chapman, a Martin County resident interviewed by Washington Monthly, stated in reference to Spadaro, “Normally, I don’t like federal mining investigators. But it’s a shame that someone who stood up for what was right has to pay for it... He rocked the boat so they threw him overboard.”⁴⁸

Lack of Transparency at MSHA: Mine Safety Data Withheld

In addition to accident investigation suppression and whistleblower retaliation at MSHA, mine inspection reports and notes were withheld from public view during the Bush administration. Beginning in 2004, the independent newsletter Mine Safety and Health News reported that MSHA reversed a longstanding policy of routinely releasing inspection notes and other information to the public.⁴⁹

The newsletter links the lack of transparency at MSHA to an earlier memo by then Attorney General John Ashcroft⁵⁰ to all federal agencies in 2001.⁵¹ The agencies were urged to restrict the release of information under the Freedom of Information Act whenever legally justifiable.⁵² (The Ashcroft memo, which reversed an earlier Clinton-era memo that instructed agencies to presume that information is releasable unless a specific reason exists, was itself overturned by Attorney General Eric Holder in March 2009.⁵³)

In a January 2006 letter to then Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) stated: "This unwarranted secrecy may protect the mining industry from embarrassing disclosures, but it undermines accountability and mine safety... The inspectors' reports and notes were particularly important. Not only were they used by mine safety organizations, mine workers, and the public to identify dangerous mines and practices, they were also useful to mine operators implementing needed improvements in mine safety."⁵⁴

A report by the DOL’s Inspector General in 2006 found that MSHA missed legally required inspections at over 100 mines in 2006, in part due to lack of management emphasis on inspection completion.^55,56 As mining accident deaths spiked upwards in 2005 and 2006, the cost of hidden and missing safety inspections became strikingly apparent.⁵⁷

(CBS) A government whistle-blower says the Bush administration covered up the reasons for a toxic coal slurry spill in Appalachia that ranks among the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. [6]

Jack Spadaro tells Correspondent Bob Simon that political appointees in the Department of Labor whitewashed a report that said an energy company that had contributed to the Republican Party was responsible for the 300-million gallon spill.Simon's report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, April 4, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Spadaro was until recently the head of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy and played a key role in investigating the spill, which was 25 times the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska."It polluted 100 miles of streams, killing everything in the streams, all the way to the Ohio River," says Spadaro of the October 2000 spill that affected West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky."The Bush administration came in and the scope of our investigation was considerably shortened. I had never seen something so corrupt and lawless in my entire career...interference with a federal investigation of the most serious environmental disaster in the history of the Eastern United States."Spadaro says his investigation found Massey Energy, the owner of the impoundment containing the viscous and toxic liquid, knew the containment was weak, and in fact, had leaked once before. The company was going to be cited for serious violations that could have resulted in large fines and criminal charges, Spadaro says.

===

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mine_Safety_and_Health_Administration

http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/oil-companies-pay-a-pittance-in-penalties-to-offshore-drilling-regulator

Last week, as part of our coverage of the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, we noted the troubled past of the Minerals Management Service, the agency that regulates offshore oil and gas drilling.

On its website, MMS says that it issues civil penalties for serious safety violations [1]. And there have been violations. A study conducted by the Minerals Management Service found that from 2001 to 2007, :{offshore drilling :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:accidents resulted in 41 deaths and 302 injuries [2], according to The Huffington Post.

In an analysis of civil penalties levied by the regulator, we at ProPublica found that over the past 12 years the average penalty has been $45,000. Currently, MMS can fine oil and gas companies a maximum of $35,000 per violation per day [4] (PDF). The biggest fine an oil company has paid to the agency since 1998 was $810,000, paid in 2001 by Chevron. Overall, the Minerals Management Service has collected $20 million in penalties in those 12 years.

That kind of money is unlikely to sting much, considering the profits that major oil companies take in.

The British oil giant BP, for instance, made $5.6 billion in profits [5] in the first quarter of 2010 alone. As we reported last week, far from having a spotless safety record, the company has faced fines from several federal agencies in the last decade [6]: $21 million [7] from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, $50 million [8] from the Environmental Protection Agency, $300 million [6] from the Department of Justice -- just to name a few that the company has paid.

MMS fines against BP have been the equivalent of a rounding error. From 1998 through 2007 -- when MMS issued its last fine against the company -- BP paid less than $580,000 in penalties for its 12 safety violations.

Environmental groups say this simply isn't enough.

"Fines from the MMS are a tiny fraction of the financial profit these companies have made from their dangerous and environmentally devastating oil drilling operations," said Marcie Keever of Friends of the Earth. "When oil companies have been caught violating safety standards, they've been let off the hook with mere slaps on the wrist."

Lawmakers have also begun scrutinizing the safety regulator in connection with the BP oil spill in the Gulf. On Monday, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, an outspoken critic of offshore drilling, requested an inspector general's investigation [9] into MMS and its rulemaking process, to determine whether the regulator was influenced by industry lobbying.

We've called BP for comment and will update when we get it. We've also reached out to MMS requesting explanation of its penalties. The agency has yet to return our call.