Auditors rake deficiencies in coal mining regulatory program

The Legislative Auditor General's Office laid it on strong Wednesday: Utah's coal mining regulatory program lacks good management practices in several key areas, is inconsistent in enforcing rules and in issuing emergency permits, and has not performed as well as it reported to Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.

The criticism during the meeting of the Natural Resources Appropriations Subcommittee fleshes out the report itself, which was made public in December.

The coal regulatory program, part of the Utah Division of Gas, Oil and Mining, is responsible for monitoring impacts of coal operations on the ground's surface, such as checking for water pollution. Its authority ends at the mine portal, where other agencies, such as the federal government's Mine Safety and Health Administration, take over.

"Management needs to institute more adequate policies and procedures," Auditor General supervisor Kade Minchey said.

According to the audit, coal operators are required to submit water-monitoring data every quarter, and the division should review the reports within 30 days of receipt. Minchey noted, "eighty-nine percent of water reports in 2006 were not reviewed on time." Some reports were more than a year old before they were reviewed, he said.

Coal operators seem to be submitting the information as required, but sometimes the state's program has not notified them of the review. The audit said some coal operators were frustrated about not receiving water information feedback.

A tool called the Governor's Balanced Scorecard is intended to allow agencies to measure their performance. The audit discovered that the Division of Oil, Gas and Mining had not been measuring some key performance indicators of the coal program.

In reporting to Huntsman last year, auditors found disparities between how the division said the coal program performed and how it really did. In the first quarter of 2007, the division said the coal program completed its work in a timely fashion 78 percent of the time. After adding features that the division had not included and correcting calculation errors, auditors said the real figure that quarter was that the work was completed on time 73 percent of the time.

In the second quarter of 2007, the division reported that the coal program's work was completed on time 88 percent of the time, when the actual figure was 65 percent. For the third quarter that year, the division claimed the coal program was 87 percent on time when really it was 50 percent, says the audit.