Why Do We Still Have Mining Disasters?

[Omaha Steve]

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/why-do-we-still-have-mining-disasters/

By THE EDITORS

Several photos and the FULL story of all stories below at link.

Updated, April 8, 7:05 p.m. | Thomas G. Andrews, a historian and author of “Killing for Coal,” joins the discussion.

The exact cause of an explosion that killed at least 25 workers in a West Virginia mine on Monday has yet to be identified. But federal safety officials said that the Upper Big Branch mine had been cited for 1,342 safety violations since 2005, including a number linked to the ventilation of methane.

Related

* Interactive: Inside the West Virginia Mine Explosion
* Photographs: Mine Accident Devastates a West Virginia Town


After the disaster — the worst mine accident in the United States in more than two decades — federal regulators and members of Congress said they would investigate and seek new safety protections.

Why, after such a long history of injury and death, does coal mining remain so dangerous? Why haven’t previous regulatory crackdowns — notably after the 2006 Sago mine disaster in West Virginia in 2006 — averted this latest disaster?

* Beverly A. Sauer, Georgetown University
* Jeff Goodell, author, “Big Coal”
* Price Fishback, economist
* Bill Kovarik, historian and journalist
* Sean Patrick Adams, historian, University of Florida
* Ron Rash, novelist
* Thomas G. Andrews,historian and author of “Killing for Coal”

Accidents Are Not Inevitable
Beverly A. Sauer

Beverly A. Sauer is a professor at the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business. She is the author of “The Rhetoric of Risk: Technical Documentation in Hazardous Environments.”

As West Virginia’s governor articulated, the explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine reminds us of the extreme hazards that miners face in supplying the nation’s energy needs at an affordable price.

How automation and other technical advances may worsen safety risks, not reduce them.

In acknowledging this risk, we must remember the principal lesson of the 2006 Sago mine disaster, which killed 12 workers: that mine accidents need not necessarily become human tragedies.

Mine disasters seem inevitable because they are dramatic and all-too-frequent reminders of the dangerous and uncertain conditions in which miners work. This most deadly disaster should remind us, however, not to overthrow common sense mining practices as we design new technologies to improve mine safety.

In hindsight, the history of violations at the Upper Big Branch Mine provided unheeded signals that the mine was at risk. The mine had a history of roof falls and problems with ventilation and dust — the chief ingredients of a mine explosion. Roof falls did not cause the disaster, but roof falls may precipitate disaster directly when they crush miners under unprotected roof.

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They also disrupt ventilation pathways in the system and block exits in a disaster. Sparks created by the falling roof can ignite pockets of methane, and falling roof increases explosive dust levels.

The mine’s long-wall mining system and automated controls were designed to reduce the number of miners directly at risk. Unfortunately, these systems are often highly unreliable indicators of what is really happening underground. At Sago, for example, automated carbon monoxide alarms could not distinguish diesel exhaust from a real mine fire. When an alarm sounded, workers in the control room called miners underground to determine the cause of the alarm. When the explosion occurred, all alarms sounded at once, but the alarms were too late to save miners’ lives.

Automated mining systems may also circumvent hard-won safety regulations and common-sense mining precepts. Previously, for example, conveyor belts in ventilation shafts were not permissible — for good reason.

Conveyor belts carrying coal to the surface produce potentially explosive dust. The friction of rubber belts also creates a fire hazard. Ventilation moves clean air from the surface downward into the mine. In a belt fire, the ventilation feeds the fire, and miners are potentially trapped inside the mine. In the 2006 Aracoma Alma Mine accident — two weeks after Sago, two miners died when a belt fire produced thick black smoke in the ventilation shaft that was supposed to provide a fresh-air escapeway — despite automated warning systems.

As the Upper Big Branch mine disaster demonstrates, disasters are costly in human lives, first and foremost. but also in recovery costs and in their emotional and economic impact on the surrounding community. After the recovery, the Mine Safety and Health Administration and the West Virginia Department of Mines will determine the technical cause of the disaster.

In speculating about the cause of the disaster, we are reminded — again in hindsight — that such loss need not be inevitable.

The Politics of a Dangerous Business
Jeff Goodell

Jeff Goodell, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, is the author of “Big Coal: the Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future” and “How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth’s Climate.”

There are two basic reasons why mine safety reforms have failed. The first is simply that tunneling deep into the earth to extract coal is a dangerous business.

The real lesson of this tragedy may be that the best way to make mines safer is to make politics cleaner.

The coal industry likes to tout its improved safety record in recent years — and it’s true, the number of fatalities in coal mines today is far lower than it was several decades ago. But the main reason for this decline is a shift in mining practices: the majority of coal in the U.S. now comes from big surface mines, which are much cheaper and safer to operate (although in Appalachia, this shift has lead to the environmentally devastating practice known as mountaintop removal mining).

Underground coal mining is especially risky in Appalachia, where they have been mining coal for 150 years, and where much of the easy-to-get coal has long been mined out. What’s left is increasingly difficult and dangerous to extract, even with today’s improved mining technology. Simply put, if you’re mining coal in these kinds of conditions, you’re going to have accidents, and workers are going to die.

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The second reason mine safety reforms have failed is the political power of the coal industry. After every coal mining tragedy, there are passionate calls for new safety rules and regulations. After those reforms are proposed, they are fought over in Congress and state Legislatures, where politically connected coal operators make the case that the reforms are too onerous, too expensive, too difficult to implement. And so they are watered down, loopholes are inserted, timelines extended.

This is particularly true in West Virginia, where Don Blankenship, the head of Massey Energy, the coal company that owns the Upper Big Branch mine, holds sway over state politics there like one of the old coal barons of yore. In West Virginia, you mess with Don at your peril. If you want to know why a mine with a sorry safety record like Upper Big Branch wasn’t shut down long ago, that’s your answer.

Indeed, the real lesson of this tragedy may be that the best way to make mines safer is to make politics cleaner.

How Deaths Are Prevented
Price Fishback

Price Fishback is the Frank and Clara Kramer Professor of Economics at the University of Arizona, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and co-editor of the Journal of Economic History.

The New York Times reported that the Massey mine disaster in West Virginia has raised questions about why stricter federal mining laws enacted after the 2006 Sago mining disaster failed to prevent another tragedy. Is more regulation going to prevent the next accident?

After studying the history of workplace safety regulation, I have my doubts. The risks from underground mining can be reduced, but complete prevention of accidents requires stopping all coal production. Over the last century miners and companies have developed new technologies that have dramatically reduced the risks of mining.

A handful of specific regulations cut coal accidents in the early 1900s. Yet, there are numerous economic studies of workplace safety regulations that find that accident rates fall very little after new regulations are passed.

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The reasons are varied. Most laws have not been passed without reformers being joined by the leading, often large, companies in lobbying for laws. The new laws establish practices that the leading companies have already adopted.

The new requirements therefore only enhance safety for a small share of workers. Hiring inspectors is costly, and legislatures have balked at spending large amounts on enforcement.

Progressive Era legislation called for relatively small fines for violations, although modern fines are much larger. In addition to regulation, anticipation of stock price declines and bad publicity from accidents provide some non-regulatory incentives to prevent more accidents.

Workers’ compensation insurance requirements provide employers some financial incentives because they pay lower premiums in safer mines. Given that inspectors arrive intermittently, prevention of accidents is largely determined by the daily efforts of employers and workers to follow the effective work rules they develop.

Compared to the past, mine accidents have become increasingly rare events. As a result, each death receives far more national attention and serves as a harsh reminder of the necessity for mines to redouble their efforts at prevention.

Feudalism in Appalachia
Bill Kovarik

Bill Kovarik is a historian and journalism professor at Radford University, author of the Environmental History Timeline and co-author of “Mass Media and Environmental Conflict.”

Underground mining is inherently dangerous, but it’s more dangerous now than it needs to be. We don’t know yet the fully explanation for this week’s accident, but several themes are apparent in historic perspective.

The external costs of coal, in terms of human health or the natural environment, have never been reflected in its price.

Mine fatality rates have gone down significantly from 100 years ago, but where you see the statistical drops in fatality rates are in the years following the enactment of mining regulations.

The rates go down to under 2 fatalities per thousand miners per year only after the 1952 regulations forced mines to open up to inspections, and they drop again to the current levels of 2 to 3 fatalities per 10,000 miners per year only after passage of the 1977 Federal Mine Safety and Health Act.

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So the trend line shows clearly that regulatory agencies are the lifeline for miners. But over the past 10 years or so, the trend has not improved because the mining industry reflexively fights every minor safety regulation or improvement by the government.

In 2006, an investigation by the West Virginia Gazette showed that 90 percent of mine deaths could have been avoided if safety regulations had been followed.

The next year, the Government Accountability Office found that between 1996 and 2007, over half a million individual penalties for mine safety violations were written up by Mine Safety and Health Administration, but the average fine paid by industry, in the end, was only $234 per violation. By any standard, this is extraordinarily lax regulatory enforcement.

Why is this happening? Three factors stand out.

Appalachian people are have been historically oppressed, with ugly stereotypes used to justify their mistreatment.

The history of coal mining in Appalachia shows over a century of constant violence against those who have stood up for human rights, for labor unions and for other reforms. The coal industry has been allowed to punish reform advocates with impunity, and even very recently there has been an escalation of violent rhetoric against reformers. Cooler heads are not prevailing.

Coal is an extremely lucrative business, but because of the legacy of Appalachian energy feudalism, the industry’s financial power is more often used to capture regulatory agencies and appeal for Congressional support than it is to finance meaningful reform itself.

Also, the external costs of coal, in terms of human health or the natural environment, have never been reflected in what consumers pay to keep the lights on. For example, the costs to the U.S. government of treating black lung patients have spiraled up to unprecedented levels, while the direct costs of environmental disasters, such as the T.V.A. ash spill, are also assumed by the government and not the industries in question.

Without any major reform since 1977, what incentive does the coal industry have to change?

Tragedy’s Deep Roots
Sean Patrick Adams

Sean Patrick Adams is an associate professor of history at the University of Florida and the author of “Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth: Coal, Politics and Economy in Antebellum America.”

Coal mining has always been a dangerous endeavor, regardless of its historical context. The 19th-century coal miners that I study trudged through rat-infested shafts and through dirty pools of standing water to bore holes in coal seams, pack in black powder, and set off a controlled (hopefully) blast to loosen the coal.

A history of sharp indignation at coal mining tragedies followed by public indifference.

Even after risking life and limb in this stage of the process, miners faced the potential collapse of tunnels, asphyxiation by toxic gases, or sudden fires that could break out while they shoveled the broken coal into carts and sent them to the surface.

In an era when all facets of industrial labor brought some element of risk, coal miners witnessed some of the worst working conditions and rates of injury and death in the United States.

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Tragedy often spurs public officials to action, and this certainly was the case for the first comprehensive coal mining safety act. In September 1869, an uncontrollable fire trapped miners in the Steuben Shaft at Pennsylvania’s Avondale Colliery.

Without proper ventilation or any means of escape, 110 men died from smoke inhalation or asphyxiation. Pennsylvania’s governor denounced the sacrifice of so many lives “upon the alter of human cupidity,” inspiring passage of the safety act without a single dissenting vote.

But following this initial response, Pennsylvania’s mine inspectors suffered from inadequate funding, hostile and uncooperative mine operators, and a public that seemed more concerned with the benefits of cheap coal than the high toll placed on the workers.

Subsequent disasters in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, and other coal-mining states over the next century and a half spurred similar spikes of demonstrative sympathy sandwiched between periods of public indifference. Mine inspection and regulation migrated from state to federal authorities over time, but the policies suffered from the same combination of hostility and lethargy.

I don’t mean to understate the strides made by today’s coal industry in protecting its workers. The conditions in today’s coal mines are exponentially better than those of the 19th century. But modern coal mining brings a host of modern dangers. Deadly gases, like the methane that caused Monday’s disaster, will always haunt the mines.

How safe can we make coal mining in the United States? Will the tragedy in Raleigh County spur more than a fleeting sympathy from Americans outside of coal mining regions?

The long historical record, as well as the current disaster in my home state of West Virginia, suggests that we need to make a more concerted effort to resolve these problems. Material conditions in America’s coal industry have improved; the bad habits of sharp indignation at coal mining tragedies followed by public indifference have not.

Blinded by Stereotypes
Ron Rash

Ron Rash is the John Parris Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C. His the author, most recently, of “Serena,” a novel about the struggle to create the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The main reason regulations have not been as stringent as they should be is that the coal companies, with the help of politicians, have set up such ridiculously small fines for safety violations that coal companies make more money paying the fines than adhering to safety regulations.

I wonder if the popular view of Appalachia as an insular place with ignorant people makes it easier to ignore the plight of the miners until yet another disaster occurs.

For example, in 2004 a 3-year-old child was crushed to death by a half-ton boulder that tumbled down from a Black Mountain, a strip mining site in southwestern Virginia; the coal company was fined $15,000, the maximum by law. The travesty that is mountaintop removal is permitted for the same reason.

But I also wonder if the popular view of Appalachia as an insular place with ignorant people makes it easier to ignore the plight of the miners until yet another disaster occurs. The next time you turn on a light or a radio or a microwave, instead of the jokes and offensive stereotypes, think about the men who lost their lives to make that switch work.

The Price of Cheap Energy
Thomas Andrews

Thomas G. Andrews is an assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado, Denver. He is the author of “Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War.”

As everyone knows, coal mining in the United States is not nearly as deadly as it used to be.
Monday’s disaster at the Upper Big Branch Mine reminds us, however, that three immense challenges endure in America’s coal country: 1) the potential dangers of methane and coal dust; 2) the temptation for mine owners to put profits above the welfare of their employees; 3) and the tendency of the American public to ignore our complicity in the resulting disasters.

That coal mining is dangerous doesn’t let Massey Energy off the hook for the Upper Big Branch tragedy.

These challenges, it turns out, are more closely connected than they might seem at first glance; together, they form a sort of Gordian knot.

In recent years, union leaders, government officials, and even many coal corporations have publicly established an ambitious goal: zero fatalities in the nation’s coal mines. Yet as long as human beings labor in underground mines, the possibility of death on-the-job will remain.

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[katandmoon]

1. One word: GREED

[defendandprotect]

2. Capitalism, its corruption-greed -- and its buying of people's government . . .

and buying off of our elected officials--!!

[jschurchin]

3. "Why Do We Still Have Mining Disasters?"

This one is simple Steve. The fines levied by the MSHA are no where near punitive enough to eliminate them.

Make every minor violation punishable by a $50,000 fine. Every major violation punishable by a $100,000 fine. If a miner loses his/her life, the company gets fined $10,000,000 plus the family receives $10,000,000. No appeals, no negotiations.

Mining deaths in the industry would, very quickly, come to a end. But as long as we wrist slap scum like Blankenship, miners will lose their lives.

Have you ever noticed company's like Consol, work very safely. Ever wonder why? They understand that the people that work for them are their greatest asset. Without them, they have nothing.

Blankenship and his ilk have no such concern for the people that work for him. There is only one thing they understand, $$$$$$. Take away the cash, by way of fines, and they either get in line or go away.