Mine Operators Oppose New Safety Rules

Planned new U.S. mine safety rules will raise costs for mining companies that already spent close to $1 billion between them upgrading safety measures four years ago, the mine industry said.

“It’s challenging our ability to do the kind of rigorous analysis that can really improve mine safety, particularly as we’re preoccupied with implementing major safety improvements in order to meet earlier requirements,” Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association (NMA) lobby group, told Reuters.

He was responding to new rules planned by the Labor Department’s Mine Safety and Health Agency (MSHA).

“Many of the major new proposals rest on technical studies that require significant review. That’s why we are concerned about the speed at which this is being done,” Popovich said.

According to the MSHA, planned new rules would require companies to provide miners with equipment to monitor coal-dust exposure and install alarms to protect them from heavy machinery.

Another rule would require mining companies to clarify who the legal owner of a mine is to prevent owners from shutting and reopening a mine under a new name.

Regulators have discussed tighter rules since last April’s explosion that killed 29 men in Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia.

But a broader safety bill proposed after that accident, and which would raise penalties for violators of safety rules, failed to pass last year.

The NMA’s Popovich said he did not expect a new safety bill to be introduced by Congress, noting that tighter laws after 12 men died in the Sago mine in 2006, had cost the industry close to $1 billion.

He could not estimate the monetary impact of MSHA’s new proposals, but said the agency already had shown it had the authority to take action and close dangerous mines and did not need more authority.

Last month, the MSHA announced it reached a settlement agreement with Massey over alleged safety violations at the company’s Freedom mine No. 1 in Pike County, Kentucky. Last November, MSHA filed a motion in federal court for a preliminary injunction against the mine, the first such action ever taken by the agency against mine operators it said habitually violate health and safety standards. Shortly after the suit was filed, Massey announced plans to idle the mine permanently.