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Christina Fisher

Governor Rendell Modernizes Pennsylvania’s Mine Safety Law
July 11, 2008

On July 7, Governor Edward G. Rendell signed the first major update of Pennsylvania’s 125-year-old bituminous deep mine safety law, ensuring better protection for the commonwealth’s 4,200 underground bituminous coal miners.

The new law incorporates recommendations to improve safety conditions that were made following the 2002 Quecreek accident in Somerset County. It also allows Pennsylvania mines to be competitive in the national and international markets while holding mine operators responsible for the safety of their mines, and it creates a process to update mine safety regulations in the future.

Pennsylvania began regulating mine safety in 1869. The bituminous mine safety law was first written in 1883, but it had not been updated since 1961.

Most significantly, the new law creates a seven-member Board of Coal Mine Safety that will be chaired by the secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection, with equal representation among mine owners and mine workers. The board will have the authority to write new mine safety regulations—something the department is unable to do through existing statute.

In addition, the new law will:

• Make the mine owner or operator primarily responsible for safety compliance at the mine and allow DEP to assess fines and penalties for noncompliance. Currently, only individually certified employees or supervisors, such as foremen, can be held responsible for an accident, not the mine company or its executives.
• Increase to 500 feet from 200 feet the distance from which a bituminous underground operator must conduct advanced drilling when approaching an adjacent mine that may contain water or gas to provide an extra measure of security so miners don’t accidentally breech an abandoned mine pool, as happened at Quecreek.
• Authorize the department to use emergency contracting provisions to pay for mine rescue and other mine safety activities.

Updating Pennsylvania’s underground mine safety program has been a priority since 2002 when nine miners at the Quecreek Mine in Somerset County were trapped underground after they breached a flooded and abandoned mine that was not shown on mining maps. All nine miners survived following a dramatic rescue.

• The measures in this bill supplement administrative changes made by DEP’s Bureau of Mine Safety since the Quecreek accident, including:
• Giving mine safety officials the authority to review every mine permit application and reject applications if they think unsafe conditions may exist.
• Implementing stringent new requirements to validate and verify underground mine maps before new mining can take place.
• Increasing the distance between planned mining and abandoned mines from 200 feet to 500 feet—to provide an extra measure of security so miners don’t accidentally breech an abandoned mine pool containing millions of gallons of water, as happened at Quecreek.
• Replacing outdated equipment that was more than 30 years old with 84 new, self-contained breathing units, at a cost of $745,000, for underground mine rescue teams. These new units are housed at mine rescue stations in Uniontown, Fayette County; Ebensburg, Cambria County; and Tremont, Schuylkill County.
• Developing and implementing training for dealing with mine inundation, as well as continuing education programs for mining professionals, mine managers, and mine inspectors on mine safety issues.
• Increasing salaries for engineers, inspectors and training staff in order to be more competitive when recruiting and maintaining quality safety professionals.

Pennsylvania is the fourth largest coal producing state, following Wyoming, West Virginia and Kentucky, with 35 underground bituminous mines reporting production in 2007, including four of the six highest-producing underground mines in the nation. More than 20,000 bituminous coal miners have died in accidents since the commonwealth began keeping records in 1877.

For more information on underground mine safety, visit www.depweb.state.pa.us, keyword: Mine Safety.

Posted by Christina Fisher on July 11, 2008 | Comments (0)