Mine inspectors hit 100%

For the first time in its 31-year history, inspectors for the Mine Safety and Health Administration completed every regular inspection they were required to conduct during a fiscal year.

"Reaching this milestone is an outstanding and significant achievement," said Richard E. Stickler, acting assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health.

MSHA had been under pressure to complete and improve inspections after Utah's Crandall Canyon Mine disaster last year and the Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia in 2006.

MSHA launched a "100 Percent Plan" a year ago to help reach the goal of conducting all required inspections. Federal law requires MSHA to inspect every underground mine four times a year, and every surface mine twice a year. The nation has more than 14,800 active mining operations.

"Miners are safer today due to the success of this program," Stickler said.

Stickler said reaching the goal required 190,000 overtime hours for inspectors during fiscal 2008, and required the temporary reassignment of MSHA inspectors to areas where they were most needed. Inspectors filed more than 172,000 citations and orders for violations in that period.

Since July 2006, MSHA has hired more than 360 new coal enforcement officials, and the 2008 budget funded hiring 55 additional metal/nonmetal inspectors. However, up to 18 months are needed for new hires to become fully trained inspectors. Once the new hires are certified, MSHA's enforcement ranks will be at their highest level since 1994.

In August — at the anniversary of the Crandall Canyon disaster — the Deseret News found that inspectors were citing coal-mine operators in Utah for routinely and repeatedly breaking even the most essential of safety rules in the year after that accident.

Federal inspectors cited more than 1,300 safety violations in Utah underground coal mines in the 12 months after the disaster — besides another score of violations issued for the disaster itself — a rate higher than the average for the previous four years.

At least 368 of them were considered "significant and substantial" threats to health and life. Inspectors proposed fines of at least $1.2 million for violations in Utah in that time, while fines for nearly 400 of them had yet to be set.

---

E-mail: lee@desnews.com