Miners get place to speak out

Sitterud said one of the things that concerns him is the emotional response resulting from the Crandall Canyon Mine disaster. He told the panel not to allow that emotion to cloud their judgment.

"Use your head. Help the miners, don't hurt them," he said. "Listen to these miners, help them do what they need to do."

Some speakers focused on the importance of continuing education and training for improving mine safety. Allen Childs now heads an engineering firm but spent more than 20 years in mining, including nine years as foreman for what is now the Crandall Canyon Mine. He said safety should be the obligation of every person involved in mining from top-level executives to entry-level employees.

"Nobody is responsible for their health and safety but them. We need to have the most effective way of when we train people we have a response, not just a nod of the head. We need to have some way of measuring that," he said.

Training should not be just a once-a-year opportunity, he said. It should be done on a daily basis using quantifiable methods.

Allen said one of the goals of any mining operation should be to develop a culture of safety and reporting deficiencies when they are noticed. He said promoting a "safety-first" attitude could go a long way toward making individual mine operations safer.

He also talked about reducing barriers to a safe working environment. Noting many mine employees in Utah are immigrants, he said operators should do their best to help those workers understand their obligations and the company's responsibilities to them. He said the same would go for any employee no matter what their particular challenge might be.

One of the other topics that drew interest from the commission was the dwindling number of Utahns who are taking up mining as a career. Carl Pollastro, director of technical services and project development for Interwest Mining Co. said a huge percentage of the state's mining workforce will be ready to retire in the next ten years and there are not enough people currently in the pipeline to replace them.

"The resources that are needed to develop electrical generation are going to be ongoing for the next thirty years in this area at least. So we need to have someone to take their place and mine that fuel," Pollastro said.

The panel's next public meeting will be held Tuesday, Oct. 2, at the College of Eastern Utah in Price.

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