Senators promise to increase mine safety

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers pledged to step up federal oversight of the nation's coal mines on Monday and accused the agency that has that job with failing to prevent the deaths of 14 miners in West Virginia.

"Fourteen men in the span of three weeks. These deaths, I believe, were entirely preventable," said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W. Va.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chaired the hearing on the accidents at the Sago and Aracoma mines. He expressed anger after the acting head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration left the roughly two-hour hearing halfway through.

"I can't recollect it ever happening before," Specter said of acting Assistant Secretary David Dye's decision to leave. Dye said he had urgent agency business to tend to.

"We'll find a way to take appropriate note of it," warned Specter, who heads the appropriations subcommittee that oversees the mine agency, part of the Labor Department.

Specter said he would try to pass federal legislation this year that would stiffen penalties against coal operators that violate safety rules and would require that up-to-date safety equipment be placed in mines.

Specter called for an end to a practice in which coal operators can whittle down fines they receive though an appeals process. As an example, he cited the reduction of fines — from $435,000 to $3,000 — against a coal company in charge of an Alabama mine where 13 people were killed in 2001.

He also said he thinks a fee could be imposed on coal operators — to be used for new safety equipment. "The real responsibility lies with the industry as opposed to the taxpayers generally," said the Pennsylvania Republican.

Witnesses at the hearing debated the merits of new safety equipment. One device available in about a dozen mines allows people above ground to send text messages to miners below.

Dye said the devices had some "problems with reliability," but Davitt McAteer, who headed MSHA under the Clinton administration, said that's not true.

"These devices have proved to be reliable," McAteer said.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, whose father was a coal miner, said he would like to see the text-messaging device along with a tracking device underground that can locate trapped miners.