MILLER SEEKS FEDERAL CRIMINAL PROBE OF CRANDALL CANYON MINE BLASTS

Friday, May 9, 2008

(PAI)MILLER SEEKS FEDERAL CRIMINAL PROBE OF CRANDALL CANYON MINE BLASTS
By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer

    WASHINGTON (PAI)--Saying a top coal company official
may have withheld vital safety information--about a
previous accident--from federal mine safety officials,
House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George
Miller (D-Calif.) formally asked the GOP Bush
government’s Justice Department for an investigation
to see if criminal violations occurred before August’s
Crandall Canyon, Utah, fatal coal mine explosions.

    Miller’s 4-page April 29 letter was attached to his
committee staff’s 158-page investigative report about
the two blasts at the mine.   The first entrapped and
killed six miners and the second killed three
rescuers, including a Mine Safety and Health
Administration (MSHA) inspector.

    Miller’s letter and the report found safety
deficiencies at the mine--notably minimization of a
prior blast there--by the mine’s owner, Murray Energy
Corp., and by then mine-manager Laine W. Adair. The
report does not charge any other individuals,
including mine owner Robert Murray, by name with
responsibility for the disaster.

    But it does say that “Adair, individually or in
conspiracy with others, willfully concealed or covered
a material fact or made materially false
representations” to MSHA about conditions at the mine,
and specifically about the preceding March accident.
That accident was not fatal, but raised questions
about the firm’s “retreat mining” plan.

    Retreat mining is a technique in coal mining where,
after a mine is excavated, companies order miners to
extract coal from pillars that had been left intact to
hold up the mine’s ceiling, backing out of the mine as
they do so. But that technique created a “bump”--a
burst pillar--in March, the report said. Adair
minimized its significance.

    At his May 8 press conference releasing the report,
Miller also criticized MSHA for lack of vigilance. He
said, citing the report, that despite prior problems
at Crandall Canyon, MSHA uncritically approved Murray
Energy’s retreat mining plan, and did not inspect the
mine while the retreat was occurring.

    He also noted that intensive computer analysis of
conditions in the mine, carried out by consultants the
committee hired, showed the retreat mining should not
have pulled down the pillars supporting Crandall
Canyon’s roof. Doing so puts untenable pressure on
remaining pillars, causing them to burst and the
explosions to occur.

    And Miller said greed was also a reason for the
tragedy. With the price of coal
rising, Murray Energy--a non-union shop whose miners
did not have the Mine Workers there to speak for them against unsafe
conditions--engaged in the dangerous retreat mining in
order to make more profits from the mine, he said.

    Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts, who has cited
Crandall Canyon as a reason for the further mine
safety legislation that Miller’s committee passed
earlier this year, hailed the report. He said it
proved--again--UMWA’s assertion that the fatal blasts
should never have occurred.

    “The investigation...provides further confirmation of
what the UMWA has said from the outset: The plan
submitted by the mine operator for mining the coal was
flawed and should never have been submitted, and the
Mine Safety and Health Administration should never
have approved it,” he said. Roberts demanded the
Justice Department “fully and completely investigate
these matters, without regard to where that may lead.

         “Yet for all the analyses, all the insights
and all the investigations, the fact remains that nine
miners are dead today who should not be. Family
members have wept and been left inconsolable. Wives,
parents and children are without husbands, sons and
fathers. Our nation and its leaders can no longer
watch these tragedies unfold, wring our hands and say,
‘How horrible,’ then stand aside and do little to
prevent them,” Roberts said.

    MSHA withheld comment on Miller’s report, since the
agency hadn’t had a chance to read it. It is
conducting its own investigation. Adair’s attorney
called Miller’s letter to the Justice Department
seeking a criminal probe “deeply disappointing and
utterly unjustified.”
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