Appeals judge orders tougher mine safety rules (creating better-trained rescue teams)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/10/AR2009021003034_pf.html

By TIM HUBER
The Associated Press
Tuesday, February 10, 2009; 6:50 PM

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A judge on Tuesday ordered the federal agency that regulates coal mining to strengthen rules designed to make the nation's 38,000 underground coal miners safer by creating better-trained rescue teams.

U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Judge Stephen Williams ordered the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration to reconsider rescue team rules covering small coal mines. Current rules allow teams at mines with fewer than 36 employees to train just once a year.

Williams ruled that violates a federal law passed after the deaths of 12 West Virginia coal miners following a January 2006 methane gas explosion and two other high-profile underground mining accidents that killed seven workers in West Virginia and Kentucky later that year.

Williams also ordered MSHA to eliminate a rule allowing teams of state mine inspectors to substitute work for rescue practice.

MSHA said it will make the necessary changes, which will require state employee teams to train twice a year at small mines and participate in two contests for mine rescue teams, the agency said in a statement. Teams at small mines will be required to train twice a year as well, MSHA said.

United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts, whose labor union challenged the rules in court, praised the ruling.

FULL story at link.

[Bluzmann57]

1. Good

I work in an MSHA governed place and there were entirely too many deaths in mining last year and the preceding years as well.