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Study: Mine
inspectors too 'nit-picky'
FOCUS SHOULD BE ON
LARGER SAFETY ISSUES, REPORT SAYS
By Ken Ward Jr.
THE CHARLESTON
(W.VA.) GAZETTE
Federal mine inspections miss "systematic" safety problems that
cause accidents and fatalities, according to a year-old study by a
government consultant.
U.S. Mine
Safety and Health Administration officials spend too much time on what
industry critics call "nit-picky" citations and not enough on larger
safety concerns, according to the study.
On Monday, MSHA officials released the September 2003 study by
ICF Consulting of Fairfax, Va.
MSHA paid the industry consulting firm more than $400,000 to
study ways that the agency could better focus -- and in some cases
reduce -- its inspections of the nation's mines.
For more than a year, MSHA would not provide Joe Main, top safety
officer for the United Mine Workers union, with any information about
the ICF study.
In mid-October, MSHA did release some government records that
outlined the purposes of the ICF review, including one that suggested
the consultant would look for ways to reduce inspections at mines with
good safety records.
MSHA officials released the complete ICF report, and posted it on the
agency Web site --
www.msha.gov -- only after The Charleston Gazette filed a Freedom
of Information Act request for the document.
Suzy Bohnert, a press spokeswoman for MSHA, declined to make any
agency officials available for interviews about the ICF report.
In a prepared statement Monday, MSHA chief Dave Lauriski said the
agency is still reviewing the year-old report.
"This third-party review is just one of the many tools we at MSHA
are using in our ongoing evaluations of agency operations," Lauriski
said in the statement. "The study took a fresh look at how to enhance
mine safety, and we may not find every recommendation to be useful."
In its report, ICF found that MSHA generally accomplishes the
legal requirement that it inspect all underground mines four times a
year and all surface mines twice a year.
However, ICF said it was unable to correlate the types of
injuries with the types of citations from MSHA.
"This suggests that at least some factors contributing to
the current incident rates are not being captured in the process of
issuing citations," the ICF report said.
ICF said it found that the numbers of citations and serious
citations issued during MSHA inspections have not decreased over the
past five years.
"One might have expected that, over time, actions by the mines to
correct the cited violations would lead to a decrease in citations,"
the report said.
"This expectation is not supported by the data, which suggests
that mine operators may be addressing only the specific symptomatic
non-compliance cited and not correcting the underlying systematic
causes," the ICF report said.
In his statement, Lauriski said MSHA is taking a "comprehensive
look" to "figure out how to get to the next level in mine safety --
zero mining fatalities, injuries and illnesses."
The ICF report, however, suggested the agency is still far from
meeting lesser goals that Lauriski himself set for the industry.
Lauriski set his goals as reducing fatality rates by 15 percent a
year and reducing the all-injury rate by 50 percent by the end of 2005
compared with the fiscal year 2000 baseline.
ICF projected that "times for reaching a 15 percent reduction in
fatalities is 4.7 years and for a 50 percent reduction in total
injuries is 12 years."
In Kentucky, there have been four mine fatalities so far this
year. There were eight mining deaths in Kentucky in 2003. There were
29 coal-mining deaths nationwide last year. |