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Utah Mine Disaster and Preventing Future Tragedies

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Utah Mine Disaster and Preventing Future Tragedies S. HRG. 110–471 UTAH MINE DISASTER AND PREVENTING FUTURE TRAGEDIES HEARING BEFORE A SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION SPECIAL HEARING SEPTEMBER 5, 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 43–788 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 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 3 Opening statement of Senator Arlen Specter ........................................................ 4 Opening statement of Senator Robert C. Byrd ..................................................... 6 Statement of Senator Orrin G. Hatch .................................................................... 7 Statement of Senator Robert F. Bennett ............................................................... 8 Statement of Hon. Richard E. Stickler, Assistant Secretary of Labor, Mine Safety and Health Administration, Department of Labor, Washington, DC .. 9 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 11 Prepared statement of Senator Patty Murray ....................................................... 30 Statement of J. Davitt McAteer, esquire, vice president of sponsored pro- grams, Wheeling Jesuit University, Shepherdstown, West Virginia ............... 42 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 43 Statement of Cecil E. Roberts, international president, United Mine Workers of America, Fairfax, Virginia .............................................................................. 49 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 51 Statement of Bruce Watzman, vice president, safety, health and human re- sources, National Mining Association, Washington, DC ................................... 62 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 64 Questions submitted by Senator Daniel K. Inouye ............................................... 76 Questions submitted by Senator Patty Murray .................................................... 77 Questions submitted by Senator Robert C. Byrd .................................................. 79 Questions submitted by Senator Robert F. Bennett ............................................. 81 (III) UTAH MINE DISASTER AND PREVENTING FUTURE TRAGEDIES WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 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 10:32 a.m., in room SH–216, Hart Sen- ate Office Building, Hon. Tom Harkin (chairman) presiding. Present: Senators Harkin, Murray, Byrd, Specter, and Bennett. Also present: Senator Hatch. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR TOM HARKIN Senator HARKIN. Good morning. The Appropriations Sub- committee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education will come to order for this hearing on the Utah mine accident and improving mine safety. As you all know, last month an underground collapse in the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah trapped six miners. All of our hearts and prayers go out to the families of those six missing min- ers. Three rescue workers died trying to save the trapped miners. One of these brave men, Gary Jensen, was an MSHA employee. Mr. Stickler, I understand how difficult this must for you person- ally, and I offer my condolences to you and all of the MSHA family for the loss of Mr. Jensen. Our hearing today will address what we know so far about why the accident happened and what we can do to prevent similar acci- dents from occurring in the future. One thing that my chairman and I share is that we both come from coal-mining families. My fa- ther started mining coal in Iowa, oh, about 1910. A lot of people don’t know that Iowa was one of the most prolific coal-mining/pro- ducing areas of the country at that time. He mined coal for over 20 years. I can—now, that was long before I was born, but I can remember, as a kid, growing up, my father telling me the stories about those years in the mines, when they would go down the shaft before the sunrise and come up after the sunset. They would go weeks without ever seeing the sun, air being pumped down by men that would operate the pumps and pump the air down into the mines, and how many people were always getting killed. Always getting killed. I came across an interesting figure the other day. More than 104,000 people have died in our Nation’s coal mines over the last century—104,000. Hundreds of thousands more, like my own fa- (1) 2 ther, succumbed to black lung disease—hundreds of thousands more. So, when this accident happened, I remembered the stories of my father, telling me about what happened to them. You wonder, with all of this wonderful technology we have today, with the Mine Health and Safety Act of 1952, which mandates inspections—you wonder why this continues to happen like this. This is what we want to look into. As I said, a lot’s changed since the days my father mined coal, but I am concerned and disappointed that MSHA’s not been able to approve the use of better communications and tracking systems, and that mine operators are not employing the best technology cur- rently available to protect their employees. Our hearing today will focus on what this subcommittee and agencies under its jurisdiction—MSHA and NIOSH—are doing to make mining as safe as possible. We also need to understand MSHA’s actions leading up to the accident in the Crandall Canyon. I have one basic question, Mr. Stickler—I’ll get to that one with our opening questions—What did MSHA know about the so-called ‘‘bounces’’ or ‘‘bumps’’—they’re called ‘‘bounces’’ in the East, and ‘‘bumps’’ in the West, I guess; I call ’em cave-ins, that’s really what they are—what about the bounces that occurred in March before it approved the plan to mine in the area of the accidents, 900 feet away—900 feet away—what did MSHA know about that? Is the ap- proval process for this type of mining rigorous enough—this type of retreat mining? Is the inspection process identifying everything it should when miners are pulling pillars of coal 2,000 feet beneath the earth? I have the report of the engineering company. Well, I have it someplace here, reading it last night. The report of the engineering company that went out and—after the first bounce in March, and then recommended the subsequent bigger pillars 900 feet to the south. What did MSHA know about this? I want to find out the an- swer to that question. We also need to know how the rescue operation was developed. Did we get the best thinking and technology available, to the table? What did we learn about what other countries are doing in effec- tive mine rescue operations that can be adopted here? MSHA spon- sored the Third Annual International Mine Rescue Conference, just last week. What are we learning? Most importantly, why do we continue to have these hearings? We had ’em under Senator Spec- ter, when he was chair. We had one earlier this year. Here we are again. Eighteen months since the hearing after the Sago disaster in West Virginia, Senator Byrd’s home. This Congress has taken significant steps to give the administra- tion the resources and tools it needs to work toward zero fatalities and serious injuries in underground coal mines. The 2006 emer- gency supplemental appropriations bills
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