WASHINGTON — The House approved a mine-safety bill Wednesday aimed at building on reforms approved by Congress in 2006, but not without strong criticisms from opponents.

With a 214-199 vote, the House passed the Supplemental Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act, known as the S-MINER which includes several reforms endorsed by families of those lost in the Crandall Canyon Mine accident last year, but opponents repeatedly said the changes are not needed yet. A similar bill is pending in the Senate.

The White House has threatened to veto the bill, and there is not enough support for the bill to override a veto.

The bill was actually introduced several weeks before the collapse at the Crandall Canyon Mine in Huntington, Emery County, that trapped six miners and killed three rescuers, but the accident illustrated the need for another mine safety bill, supporters said.

"It is critical that Congress take this action, because one thing is clear: We cannot leave mine safety and health to the Bush administration," Rep. George Miller, D-Calif, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said on the House floor Wednesday. "We owe it to the loved ones of miners who died on the job to pass these protections today."

Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, is a co-sponsor of the bill and voted for it while Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah and Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah voted against the bill. None of them spoke on the floor during the debate.

Republicans and other critics of the bill objected to it, saying the new provision does nothing to advance safety but would only complicate existing safety rules and jeopardize rules that have not been implemented yet.

"In 2006, Congress came together to pass bipartisan mine safety reforms that were embraced by both industry and labor as the most significant safety improvements in decades," said Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif. "Today, Democrats walked away from those reforms, opting instead to impose a brand new set of rules and requirements that ignore the experience and input of experts and stakeholders and threaten the jobs and physical security of the very miners we're trying to protect."

Others emphasized that none of the investigations into what happened at the Crandall Canyon mine are complete yet. McKeon called the bill "premature."

The bill would create new retreat mining standards as well as rules for explosions and fires inside a mine. It would give the Mine Safety and Health Administration subpoena authority, increase penalties against mine operators that violate the law and create a miner ombudsman's office within MSHA to handle safety complaints from miners. "It actually puts teeth into the MINER act," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.

The bill would mandate that miners have better communication equipment now instead of by 2009 as called for in the 2006 bill.

The bill also defines the government's responsibility at the scene of a disaster. Crandall Canyon families have repeatedly complained about how they were treated at the scene.

Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., whose district includes the Sago Mine where 12 miners died in 2006, said additional legislation could hurt what improvements are already under way.

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