Many mines not inspected, Labor Dept., concedes

WASHINGTON (PAI)--The Bush government’s Mine Safety and Health Administration, charged with overseeing job safety conditions at the nation’s coal mines, did not undertake all four of the yearly required inspections at 107 of the 731--or one-seventh--of them, a new audit says.

The audit was released late in the afternoon of Friday Nov. 16 by the Labor Department’s Inspector General, in an attempt to downplay its coverage. The audit said MSHA failed to do all the inspections due to short-staffing and that agency “management did not place adequate emphasis on ensuring the inspections were completed and the reported completion rate was accurate.

“Specifically, the number of inspectors assigned to the 11 Coal Mine Safety & Health districts was not commensurate with the mine activity at the districts, and management’s monitoring of inspection completions was not effective,” the IG added.

“Missed or incomplete inspections place miners at risk because hazardous conditions in the mines may not be identified and corrected,” the IG said flatly.

The critical report received added emphasis after two fatal explosions and collapses at Utah’s Crandall Canyon mine killed six miners and three rescuers, including an MSHA inspector. The IG is continuing a separate probe of MSHA’s role at Crandall Canyon. That includes why MSHA approved the company’s faulty plan to mine the pillars of coal that supported the mine’s roof.

The audit echoes longtime criticisms of the agency by the United Mine Workers. UMW President Cecil Roberts has repeatedly said MSHA administrators under the GOP Bush regime disregard safety issues in deference to mine owners and operators.

But the Inspector General said MSHA’s problems are widespread. “Because inspection deficiencies identified in our audit were caused by weaknesses in policies and procedures, it is likely similar problems existed in all 11 CMS&H districts,” it adds.

“In fact, MSHA found similar inspection and supervisory oversight problems during internal reviews of three fatal underground mining accidents at the Sago, Aracoma, and Darby mines,” last year, the IG noted. The Sago blast, in early January, killed 12 miners, started a year in which coal mine fatalities rose dramatically and led to passage of new, tougher mine safety legislation.

The IG also said MSHA “could not provide adequate assurance” that all the critical inspections of various components of a coal mine, including mine owners’ plans for removing coal, were done each time an MSHA inspector visited a mine.

“Our review of 21 inspections of active mines disclosed that for the 68 selected inspection activities we tested, 15 percent were not documented as having been performed because management did not require inspectors to document all critical inspection activities performed.” Crandall Canyon was inspected the required seven times between Oct. 1, 2005 and the explosion this past August, but “16 percent of the 68 selected critical inspection activities tested for the 7 inspections were not documented as actually having been performed.”

In one case, the Crandall Canyon inspector certified he evaluated the mine’s roof control plan four months before actually inspecting the roof, the IG said. Pillars of coal, which were being mined at the owner’s orders, gave way during the first explosion and buried the six miners.

The IG sent seven recommendations for improvements to MSHA, but the agency’s chief, an appointee of anti-worker GOP President George W. Bush, did not agree with all of them.

One recommendation said the MSHA administrator “should ensure inspection resources are commensurate with the mining activity in the coal districts.” MSHA replied that it is hiring and training 270 more inspectors.

The IG also called for effective monitoring of “inspection completions,” said the agency should develop policies and procedures to “calculate the regular safety and health inspection completion rate, and ensuring the inspection data used is correct.”

Another recommendation is that “all critical inspection activities are documented as performed, or (as) not applicable at the mines being inspected.” And the IG said MSHA field office supervisors should “certify inspections are thorough and complete.

“In response, DOL’s Assistant Secretary for Mine Safety and Health disagreed with the accuracy and presentation of some of the audit results and questioned the audit methodology for assessing the thoroughness of inspections. He stated that limited enforcement time should be placed primarily on identifying and abating hazards rather than documentation and paperwork,” the Inspector General noted.

“The assistant secretary did not agree to document when a critical inspection activity was not applicable at a mine. As an alternative, he suggested adding a disclaimer statement to reports. He did not directly address our recommendation to require field office supervisors to certify inspections are thorough before being counted as complete.” The IG called the “disclaimer statement” inadequate.