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Improving Mine Safety: One Year After Sago and Alma

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Improving Mine Safety: One Year After Sago and Alma S. HRG. 110–464 IMPROVING MINE SAFETY: ONE YEAR AFTER SAGO AND ALMA HEARING BEFORE A SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION SPECIAL HEARING FEBRUARY 28, 2007—WASHINGTON, DC Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations ( Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 43–819 PDF WASHINGTON : 2008 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–0001 COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS ROBERT C. BYRD, West Virginia, Chairman DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont TED STEVENS, Alaska TOM HARKIN, Iowa ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico HERB KOHL, Wisconsin CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri PATTY MURRAY, Washington MITCH MCCONNELL, Kentucky BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota LARRY CRAIG, Idaho MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas JACK REED, Rhode Island SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey WAYNE ALLARD, Colorado BEN NELSON, Nebraska LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee CHARLES KIEFFER, Staff Director BRUCE EVANS, Minority Staff Director SUBCOMMITTEE ON DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES TOM HARKIN, Iowa, Chairman DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania HERB KOHL, Wisconsin THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi PATTY MURRAY, Washington JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana LARRY CRAIG, Idaho RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas JACK REED, Rhode Island TED STEVENS, Alaska FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama ROBERT C. BYRD, West Virginia, (ex officio) Professional Staff ELLEN MURRAY ERIK FATEMI MARK LAISCH ADRIENNE HALLETT LISA BERNHARDT BETTILOU TAYLOR (Minority) SUDIP SHRIKANT PARIKH (Minority) Administrative Support TERI CURTIN JEFF KRATZ (Minority) (II) CONTENTS Page Opening statement of Senator Tom Harkin .......................................................... 1 Statement of Senator Robert C. Byrd .................................................................... 3 Opening statement of Senator Arlen Specter ........................................................ 5 Statement of Senator Patty Murray ...................................................................... 7 Statement of Hon. Richard E. Stickler, Assistant Secretary, Mine Safety and Health Administration, Department of Labor ............................................ 8 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 10 Statement of Dr. John Howard, Director, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Department of Health and Human Services ..................... 14 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 15 Statement of Cecil Roberts, international president, United Mine Workers of America, Washington, DC ............................................................................... 39 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 40 Statement of Bruce Watzman, vice-president, National Mining Association ..... 45 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 47 Statement of J. Davitt McAteer, esquire, vice president of sponsored pro- grams, Wheeling Jesuit University, Shephardstown, West Virginia ............... 50 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 52 Statement of Chris R. Hamilton, senior vice president, West Virginia Coal Association, Charleston, West Virginia .............................................................. 55 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 57 Questions submitted by Senator Tom Harkin ....................................................... 70 Question submitted by Senator Robert C. Byrd .................................................... 80 (III) IMPROVING MINE SAFETY: ONE YEAR AFTER SAGO AND ALMA WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2007 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES, COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met at 2:15 p.m., in room SD–124, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Tom Harkin (chairman) presiding. Present: Senators Harkin, Murray, Byrd, Specter, and Shelby. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR TOM HARKIN Senator HARKIN. Good afternoon. The Appropriations Sub- committee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies will now come to order for this hearing on mine safety. I’m happy to convene this hearing in response to a request from Senator Byrd, the chairman of the full Appropriations Committee. At the outset, I want to say that Senator Byrd has no peer, when it comes to improving the health and the safety of our Nation’s miners. In response to his leadership, our subcommittee included $302 million in the fiscal year 2007 Joint Funding Resolution for the Mine Safety and Health Administration, MSHA. This amount is $24.5 million more than MSHA would have gotten without his efforts, and $14 million more than the President’s budget request. Last year, Senator Byrd pushed for supplemental appropriations of $25.6 million for MSHA and $10 million for the National Insti- tute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)—funding re- quired to hire more coal inspectors and push the development of technologies that can improve the working conditions of miners. In addition, Senator Byrd led the Congress in passing the MINER Act, the most significant piece of mine safety legislation passed in the last 30 years. Earlier this month, Senator Byrd made an outstanding speech about coal mining on the Senate Floor, in which he quoted the great labor leader, John L. Lewis. I wondered at the time if the President pro tem of the Senate knew—I’m sure he does, because he’s very knowledgeable about these things—but not a lot of people know that John L. Lewis was born and raised, and began to mine coal in the State of Iowa. Not too many people—I’ve won more beers at bars with miners on that little tidbit of information than anything you can imagine. We have the John L. Lewis museum, in Lucas, Iowa—it’s a wonderful museum. About all of the early days (1) 2 of coal mining in this country. At that time, Iowa was one of the leading coal-producing States in the country. A lot of the Welsh tie- ins, the Slovenes, my mother was an immigrant, her family came over to mine coal, that kind of thing. My father started mining coal in Iowa sometime around 1910. Now, of course, I wasn’t born until after he’d finished—he worked in the mines about 23 years. Then the Depression hit. He tried a little bit of farming, and lost his farm in the Depression. Then he came back, actually, and worked a little bit, when the mine came back right at the beginning of World War II. But I can remember, as a little kid, my father and some of his buddies, his friends that all worked in the coal mines, sitting around, talking about it, and what it was like. As a little kid, lis- tening to this, I can still remember how scary it was—about going down in this rickety, old elevator, how they would pump air, manu- ally, pump air down into the mine. I still, well I had until recently, his old carbide lantern, you know, the old carbide lanterns they would wear. How they would go out, and they’d go down in the mine before the sun came up, and they would come up after the sun went down. My dad, and those guys, sometimes would go for weeks without ever seeing the sunshine. They lost a lot of people, working in those coal mines. Well, anyway, just an aside, I didn’t mean to get into all that. But anyway, that just made an impression on me, growing up. I’ve just always had a feeling about miners in this country, and the kind of work they do, and the kind of lives they lead. If it weren’t for the miners of this country, we wouldn’t have the kind of soci- ety—the powered generation. The coal that was used to heat our homes—to make our great factories, our steel mills that produced all the things we used World War II, our electric lighting, all came from coal. So, it’s safe to say, that on the backs of our miners, we built America. So I’m proud to have come from that line miners. Well, it’s been more than 1 year since the tragedies at the Sago and Alma Mines. Despite all of the heightened focus on safety after those events, another 33 mining families lost a loved one during the remainder of 2006. Even after Sago and Alma, we did no better protecting miners. Well, this has got to change. As a son of a coal miner, my heart goes out to these families, as does my commitment to follow the lead of Senator Byrd, and try to find a way to prevent another needless loss of life. When my father started mining coal in Iowa around 1910, there was one fatality—at least this is what my research says—1 fatality for every 257 miners. In 2006, that rate was 1 death for every 2,537 miners, so that’s a pretty significant improvement over
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