Mines dropped from special safety review get a closer look

Federal safety inspectors last month took a closer look at troubled mines that had previously avoided special review due to a lack of government funding, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) announced Thursday.

The action came following a damning report from the Labor Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG), which found MSHA officials had instructed inspectors to skip reviews of many unsafe projects because the agency lacked resources. The report immediately raised the eyebrows of some top Democrats, who are calling for stricter mine safety rules — and a review of MSHA's funding.

Last year, MSHA had identified a number of mines suspected of disregarding safety rules in the name of increasing production. Under rules in place at the time, regional inspectors were supposed to examine those operations to see if they fit MSHA's "pattern of violations" (POV) status, which could result in the closure of unsafe mines. Instead, OIG found, a top MSHA official told regional offices to "select no more than one mine on the initial screening list per field office and a maximum of three mines per district."

The OIG warned last week that there was no evidence the dropped mines "had reduced their rate of significant and substantial violations. As a result, miners may be subjected to increased safety risks."

The warning wasn't lost on MSHA, which, in the past week, inspected all of the mines that were dropped as a result of that policy, the agency announced Thursday.

Joseph Main, who heads MSHA, said the policies and mindset allowing those projects to escape earlier scrutiny have been abandoned under his watch.

"The career leadership at MSHA was following the existing policies in place prior to my arrival at MSHA, and I do not agree with these policies," Main said in a statement. In the future, Main added, enforcement decisions "will be based solely on what is best for the safety and health of the miners."

On Capitol Hill, some top Democrats say the OIG report is a clear indication Congress needs to evaluate MSHA's funding.

"Agency resources," Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said last week, "should not be a factor when MSHA determines whether or not to take enforcement action to protect miners from safety violations."