Senators urge stronger federal oversight of coal mines

In an opening salvo against federal mine safety enforcement policies, a battery of senators on Wednesday called for greater vigilance over the coal industry in the wake of the disaster that claimed nine lives at the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah last month.

Richard Stickler, assistant secretary of labor for the Mine Safety and Health Administration, came under criticism from several members of the Senate Labor-Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee. He faced charges that the agency had approved a mining plan at Crandall Canyon, a deep-coal operation that had piled up safety violations and conducted potentially hazardous retreat mining practices in a region noted for unstable geology.

Mindful of recent mine disasters in his home state of West Virginia, Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., angrily recalled for Stickler that 24 miners died across the nation in the past year, and said "something has gone very, very wrong" at MSHA. "What the hell does it take to shape up that agency?" Byrd snapped. "The buck stops with you."

Senate Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, spread blame to coal mine operators for what he saw as resistance to adopting up-to-date technologies, as well as certain foreign mining practices in such places as Poland and South Africa that help reduce injuries and fatalities in mines. "I am concerned and disappointed that the operators are not employing the best technology to make mining as safe as possible," he said.

Conspicuously absent from the subcommittee's witness list was Robert Murray, chief operating officer of the company that ran the Utah mine. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Murray -- who had called the Crandall Canyon disaster an act of God -- had first told the panel he was too busy with work to attend then said he was ill.

Specter threatened to seek a subpoena commanding his appearance. "We will not allow him to avoid answering questions from this subcommittee," Specter said.

Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers Union, said 64 coal miners have died in accidents just since the Sago explosion in West Virginia in January 2006. Roberts said the Crandall Canyon disaster was avoidable and blamed MHSA for approving a plan in June, about seven weeks before the Utah cave-in that permitted the retreat mining process there. Retreat mining essentially is a process of scraping out coal from already mined strata by pulling out coal pillars that serve to hold up seams and overburden.

MSHA's Stickler -- an interim appointee of the Bush administration whose subsequent nomination for the post has been held up by Bryd -- defended the record of his agency. He said it was too soon to assign blame for the Crandall Canyon disaster until an investigation is completed. He acknowledged that seismic evidence by the U.S. Geological Survey had indicated the event which killed six miners and three rescue workers was caused by a mine collapse and not an earthquake.

Stickler said that MSHA, in the time since Murray took over the Utah mine a year ago, had issued 67 violations of mine safety rules there. He also said MSHA had conducted five regular and two spot inspections of the mine, and responded to a complaint from a whistleblower.