Memo shows Utah mine already had roof problems in March

Utah Mine Owner: troubling Safety Record, Political Clout
Utah Mine Owner: Troubling Safety Record, Useful Political Clout
HuffingtonPost.com
by Max Follmer
August 14, 2007 08:42 PM

In 2003, when safety inspectors ordered the owner of a Utah coal mine where six workers have been trapped for more than a week to shut down one of his Ohio operations because of repeated safety problems, local press reports say he did not hesitate to flex his political muscle to get the inspectors off his back.

West Virginia Public Radio reporter Jeff Young filed a story at the time that said Murray Energy Corp. CEO Bob Murray had a meeting in Morgantown, W. Va. with Tim Thompson, then a district manager for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Young obtained notes from the meeting which showed Murray threatening to have MSHA employees fired.

"I will have your jobs. They are gone. The clock is ticking," Young quotes Murray as saying at the meeting.

The notes then go on to say Murray dropped the name of a pair of powerful Republicans in order to underscore his own political clout.

"Mitch McConnell calls me one of the five finest men in America, and last time I checked he was sleeping with your boss," Murray told the inspectors, referring to the senior GOP senator from Kentucky. The quote was repeated in an Oct. 2006 Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader article on McConnell's political influence.

McConnell - the Republican leader in the Senate - is married to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, who oversees MSHA. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, McConnell has received $176,800 in campaign donations from mining interests since 2001.

Thompson was later transferred to an office away from Murray's mines, and retired from MSHA in 2006.

The Bush Administration denied that Murray played a role in Thomspon's reassignment.

Murray has personally donated $115,050 to Republican political candidates over the past three election cycles. He has given another $724,500 to the GOP over the past ten years through political action committees connected to his businesses.

"The ironic part is I am a Republican," Thompson told the Herald-Leader's John Cheves in October 2006. "But I don't think you should bring up politics in a meeting like that, involving safety."

A belt foreman at the mine in question - Powhatan No. 6 in Belmont County, Ohio - bled to death in 2001 after a conveyor belt had ripped off his arm.

A judge later ruled that the company had not been negligent in that case.

Murray's safety record has come under fire at several other mines he owns through at least a half dozen mining companies.

Mines owned by Murray's companies produce more than 20 million tons of coal annually, according to a tally by the Cleveland Plain-Dealer. His companies include Ohio Valley Coal Co., Maple Creek Mining, Inc., KenAmerican Resources, Inc., American Coal Co. and PennAmerican Coal.

Robert Gehrke at the Salt Lake Tribune reported over the weekend that Murray's Galatia mine in southern Illinois has racked up 2,787 violations over the past two years. MSHA has proposed more than $2.4 million in fines at Galatia, according to Gehrke's reporting.

Another Murray-owned company - Ken American Resources - and four of its top employees were convicted in a federal court in Kentucky of conspiring to violate federal mine safety rules.

A judge later threw out part of the verdict, but the company was ordered to pay $306,000 in fines, an amount federal prosecutors considered too lenient.

Speaking to The Huffington Post last week, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America labor union - which does not represent workers at the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah - called Murray a "volatile" personality who routinely opposed increased safety regulations.

"Anything that will cost Bob Murray any extra money he will find reason to find fault with it," said Phil Smith, the union's communications director.

Mine Safety Czar Richard Stickler
Mine Safety Czar Richard Stickler: Another Bush Fox Guarding the Henhouse
Huffington Post
by Max Follmer
August 15, 2007 02:28 PM

The man who will oversee the federal government's investigation into the disaster that has trapped six workers in a Utah coal mine for over a week was twice rejected for his current job by senators concerned about his own safety record when he managed mines in the private sector.

President George W. Bush resorted to a recess appointment in October 2006 to anoint Richard Stickler as the nation's mine safety czar after it became clear he could not receive enough support even in a GOP-controlled Senate.

In the wake of the January 2006 Sago mine disaster in West Virginia, senators from both sides of the aisle expressed concern that Stickler was not the right person to combat climbing death rates in the nation's mines.

Democrats, led by West Virginia Sens. Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller, and Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, questioned the safety record of the mines Stickler ran when he was a coal company executive.

Over the course of his career in the private sector, Stickler managed various mining operations for Bethlehem Steel subsidiary BethEnergy Mines, Inc.

The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette reported in January 2006 that three workers died at BethEnergy mines managed by Stickler during the 1980s and 1990s.

Gazette reporter Ken Ward, Jr. wrote that in the worst of the incidents, one mechanic was killed, and eight other workers were injured when the portal bus that was carrying them to the mine-shaft bottom derailed. A report later said the portal bus had not been properly maintained.

Stickler began his career as a general laborer at BethEnergy, eventually rising to manage the company's operations in Pennsylvania and Boone County, West Virginia.

He worked briefly for Massey Energy subsidiary Performance Coal in 1996 and 1997 before becoming head of the Pennsylvania mine safety office. Stickler retired from the post in 2003.

In addition to concerns about the safety record at his mines, Stickler also faced opposition from senators, union leaders and relatives of those killed in mine accidents who felt an industry insider should not oversee safety inspectors.

United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts said that miners "could not tolerate" another industry executive overseeing their health and safety.

"Too often these mining executives place priority on productivity, but fail to focus on miners' health and safety," Roberts told Mike Hall at the AFL-CIO's blog in June 2006.

The wife and daughter of a miner killed at Sago wrote a letter to lawmakers that same month urging them to reject Stickler's nomination.

"Mr. Stickler is a longtime coal executive and because of his connections with the coal industry, we are concerned that his primary objectives may be solely on compliance and production, not on miners' health and safety,'' Debbie Hamner and Sara Bailey wrote in a letter quoted by the Gazette.

Bush first nominated Stickler to head the Mine Safety and Health Administration in September 2005. He received renewed attention from lawmakers following the Sago disaster. By May 2006 it was clear that Byrd and other Senate opponents would not allow Stickler's nomination to pass, and Republicans withdrew a scheduled vote on his job.

In July 2006, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao hired Stickler as a consultant and adviser, but insisted through a spokeswoman that she was not attempting to circumvent the nomination process.

In August and September of the same year, the Senate twice voted to send the Stickler nomination back to the White House.

In October 2006, Bush used a recess appointment to install Stickler -- a decision that was quickly denounced by senators from both sides of the aisle.

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he "didn't think Mr. Stickler was the right man for the job." Another Pennsylvania Republican, Rick Santorum, also told the paper he was "disappointed" the White House had not let senators debate and vote on the nomination.

In a written statement Wednesday, Byrd told The Huffington Post that MSHA's response to the Crandall Canyon incident will be a test of Stickler's "worthiness to be properly confirmed by the United States Senate."

Byrd also expressed concern about the slow pace of the implementation of new mining safety laws established in the wake of the Sago disaster.

"I told Mr. Stickler about my concerns earlier this summer," he said. "Until I see better progress from MSHA, I will retain my hold on Mr. Stickler's nomination."

Media Neglecting Vital Part of the Utah Mine Collapse Story
Why Are the New York Times and So Much of the Traditional Media Neglecting a Vital Part of the Utah Mine Collapse Story?
by Arianna Huffington
Posted August 14, 2007

Yesterday, while speaking at the Aspen Institute's Forum on Communications and Society, I commented on how the mainstream media have, with a few exceptions, been focusing on only one aspect of the Crandall Canyon Mine tragedy -- the desperate attempt to rescue the trapped miners -- while paying scant attention to investigating the reasons why these miners were trapped in the first place.

I specifically mentioned Sunday's New York Times piece by Martin Stolz, who had been dispatched to Huntington to cover the story. Stolz's report was filled with details about the progress rescuers had made through the collapsed mine (650 ft), and the capabilities of the hi-res camera being lowered into the mine (can pick up images from 100 ft away) -- but not one word about what led to the collapse, including the role retreat mining might have played in it, or the 324 safety violations federal inspectors have issued for the mine since 2004.

The story, like most of the TV coverage, featured Bob Murray, the colorful co-owner of the mine. Stolz painted a picture of Murray emerging from the mine "with a coal-blackened face and in miner's coveralls to discuss the latest finding with the families of the missing miners."

Cue the swelling music and start the casting session. Your mind reflexively begins to wonder who would play Murray in the Crandall Canyon TV movie. Wilfred Brimley? Robert Duvall? Paul Newman?

Of course, Murray's role in all this is much darker than that of the compassionate boss given to delivering script-ready lines like, "Conditions are the most difficult I have seen in my 50 years of mining" and "There are many reasons to have hope still" (as he has been quoted saying in two other Times stories).

He is a politically-connected Big Energy player whose company, Murray Energy Corp., has 19 mines in five states, which have incurred millions of dollars in fines for safety violations over the last 18 months.

Probably won't see that in the TV movie.

Murray has also continued to insist that the mine collapse was the result of an earthquake -- a claim disputed by seismologists.

So why has so much of the coverage focused on folksy Bob Murray, the stalwart and kindly mine owner, instead of mining mogul Robert Murray, who may have been at least partly responsible for decisions that led to the disaster?

It's because, as Jon Stewart has put it, one of the best ways to deal with members of the media is show them a shiny object over here, which distracts them from investigating the real story over there. And the hopeful, coal-covered, and always camera-ready Murray has been very shiny indeed. Especially when his face is blackened from a recent PR stint down the mine.

Back in Aspen, at a party for conference participants last night, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who had been in the room during my panel, came up to me and told me -- more than a little defensively -- that the Times had in fact reported on the safety violations last Wednesday.

Yes, I replied, but that was a few paragraphs in a single story five days ago. But while the Times has continued to cover the rescue, there was no follow up on the possible causes on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday.

During that time, the Times has been thoroughly scooped by the Salt Lake Tribune, which uncovered a memo revealing that there had been serious structural problems at the Crandall Canyon Mine in March -- in an area just 900 feet from the section of the mine that collapsed last week. And even AP did much better than the paper of record. AP reporter Chris Kahn wrote about the role retreat mining -- "a sometimes dangerous mining technique that involves pulling out leftover sections and pillars of coal that hold up the roof of a mine" -- might have played in the collapse.

Despite so many questions left unanswered about the mine's safety and the decisions the mine's owners made, the Times did no follow up. Indeed, New York Times readers -- and shareholders -- would have been better (much better) served if Times editors had spared the expense of sending reporters to Huntington and had just republished the reports from the Salt Lake Tribune and AP.

Instead, last night, Sulzberbger preferred to rationalize away his paper's choices. "I'm told that 324 violations are not a lot," he said to me.

Maybe not if you work in an office on West 43rd Street; but if you make a living by going underground to excavate coal, even one serious safety violation is one too many. And of the 324 violations, 107 were considered, in the words of a federal mine safety agency spokesman, "significant and substantial."

And if, as Sulzberger claimed, 324 violations are not a lot, why not do a story on that -- questioning whether we should be wasting taxpayer money looking for insignificant and insubstantial transgressions?

Let me stress that I am only focusing on the Times because of my exchange with Sulzberger; in fact, most of the MSM's coverage of the tragedy has tilted towards the shiny objects causing them to neglect the issues that might help prevent yet another story about the desperate attempt to rescue yet another group of trapped miners.

So we continue to get cloying coverage like the segment on AC360 last night. This is how Anderson Cooper introduced Murray: "He's really been the public face of this ordeal, keeping the families up to date -- he meets with them once or twice a day -- trying to explain the latest rescue efforts." So Murray got to go all aw shucks: "Mr. Cooper, I appreciate you having me on your program. And I appreciate the interest of all Americans in our tragedy."

But we get precious little on the Murray who had enough political muscle to get a Mine Safety and Health Administration district manager who had cracked down on safety issues at one of Murray's mines reassigned (clearly, contributing $213,000 to Republican candidates over the last ten years, as well as another $724,500 to Republican candidates and causes through political action committees connected to Murray's businesses, has its benefits). The Murray who rails against the United Mine Workers Association, claiming it wants "to damage Murray Energy, Utah American and the United States coal industry for their own motives." The Murray who called Hillary Clinton "anti-American" for saying America needs a president who will fight for workers' rights, and telling a Senate committee this summer that Al Gore and Congressional Democrats are bent on "the destruction of American lives and more death as a result of his hysterical global goofiness with no environmental benefit."

So many angles for the media to pursue -- and that's before we even get to the miners' families. A couple of family members have already spoken out about the fears for the mine's safety circulating in the community prior to the collapse.

If these stories and preliminary reports are right and it is proved that the tragic collapse at Crandall Canyon was caused by the owners' decision to proceed with retreat mining despite concerns about structural safety at the mine, then Mr. Murray should be spending less time talking to reporters, and a lot more time talking to his lawyers.

3 Rescue Workers Killed at Utah Mine
3 Rescue Workers Killed at Utah Mine

by PAUL FOY
August 17, 2007

HUNTINGTON, Utah ?- The search for six miners missing deep underground was abruptly halted after a second cave-in killed three rescue workers and injured at least six others who were trying to tunnel through rubble to reach them.

It was a devastating turn for the families of the six men trapped in the Aug. 6 collapse at the Crandall Canyon mine and for the relatives of those trying to rescue them. It's not known if the trapped miners are alive.

"It just feels like a really hard blow to swallow after all we've been through the last week and a half and everyone trying to hope in their own individual way," Huntington Mayor Hilary Gordon said in telephone interview Friday with CNN's "American Morning."

All rescue workers were evacuated from the mine Thursday evening and work underground was stopped. Asked if the search would be suspended, "that's something to be determined," said Rich Kulczewski, a U.S. Department of Labor spokesman.

Early Friday, federal officials arrived at a school to meet with several family members of the still-trapped miners.

The cave-in at 6:39 p.m. was believed to be caused by what seismologists call a "mountain bump," in which shifting ground forces chunks of rock from the walls. Seismologists say such a bump caused the Aug. 6 cave-in that trapped the six men more than 3 miles inside the central Utah mine.

The force from the bump registered a 1.6 at the University of Utah seismograph stations in Salt Lake City, said university spokesman Lee Siegel. It was the 20th reading at the university since the original collapse, which registered a 3.9 on Aug. 6.

"These events seem to be related to ongoing settling of the rock mass following the main event," Siegel said Friday morning. "I don't think I'm going too far to say that this mountain is collapsing in slow motion."

The initial collapse led to the frenetic effort by rescuers to dig through the mine toward the men and drill narrow holes atop the mountain in an attempt to learn their whereabouts and perhaps drop food and water.

It was not immediately clear where the rescuers were working or what they were doing when Thursday's bump occurred.

Underground, rescuers had advanced only 826 feet in nine days. Before Thursday's cave-in, workers still had about 1,200 feet to go to reach the area where they believe the trapped men had been working.

Mining officials said conditions in the mine were treacherous, and they were frequently forced to halt digging because of seismic activity.

A day after the initial collapse, the rescuers were pushed back 300 feet when a bump shook the mountain and filled the tunnel with rubble.

The digging had been set back Wednesday night, when a coal excavating machine was half buried by rubble by seismic shaking. Another mountain bump interrupted work briefly Thursday morning.

"The seismic activity underground has just been relentless. The mountain is still alive, the mountain is still moving and we cannot endanger the rescue workers as we drive toward these trapped miners," said Bob Murray, chief of Murray Energy Corp., the co-owner and operator of the Crandall Canyon mine.

On top of the mountain, rescuers were drilling a fourth hole on Thursday, aiming for a spot where devices called "geophones" had detected mysterious vibrations in the mountain. Both Kulczewski, the Labor Department spokesman, and Gordon, the mayor, said they believed that work continued after the accident.

"They're looking right now at finishing the drilling on the fourth hole, going through, and as I understood, that they're going to just be drilling the holes and ... putting the camera through and looking at these different ways to get in there, maybe through the top," Gordon told CNN. "But I don't think that they're going to be doing any mining down in the bottom again."

No details were available early Friday about the official cause of the rescuers' deaths.

One of the killed workers was an inspector for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, agency spokesman Dirk Fillpot said. He did not know his name or have information about the other victims.

Injuries to the survivors ranged from cuts and scrapes to head and chest trauma.

Six of the injured were taken to Castleview Hospital in Price. One rescuer died there, one was airlifted to a Provo hospital, and three were treated overnight and released Friday morning, said Jeff Manley, the hospital's chief executive. A sixth was still being treated, in serious condition with back injuries.

The second dead worker passed away at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo, hospital spokeswoman Janet Frank said. Another worker there was in serious condition with head trauma but was alert, she said.

The third death was confirmed by Kulczewski, the Labor Department spokesman.

Gov. Jon Huntsman flew to the hospital in Price early Friday and planned to meet with mine safety officials later in the day to discuss the future of the rescue operation.

Huntsman said he did not want underground tunneling to resume, but that the decision rested with the MSHA.

"We're pushing for that to cease right now unless MSHA and others can guarantee that it can continue safely," he said. "Whatever happens, we're going to want to ensure that it is done safely and that may take a little while.

"We as a state don't want any more injuries," he added. "We've had enough."

Before the latest cave-in, officials said the third of three holes drilled reached an intact chamber with potentially breathable air.

Video images were obscured by water running down that bore hole, but officials said they could see beyond it to an undamaged chamber in the rear of the mine. It yielded no sign the miners had been there.

Murray said it would take at least two days for the latest drill to reach its target, in an area where a seismic listening device detected a "noise" or vibration in 1.5-second increments and lasting for five minutes. The drilling began Thursday.

Officials say it's impossible to know what caused the vibrations and clarified the limits of the technology.

The geophone can pinpoint the direction of the source of the disturbance, but it can't tell whether it came from within the mine, the layers of rock above the mine or from the mountain's surface, said MSHA chief Richard Stickler.

The "noise," a term he used a day before, wasn't anything officials could hear, Stickler said. "Really, it's not sounds but vibrations."

Officials stressed that the motion picked up by the geophones could be unrelated to the mine, even as they drilled the new hole in an effort to uncover the source of it.
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Associated Press writers Chris Kahn, Alicia A. Caldwell and Jessica Gresko in Huntington, Ed White in Salt Lake City and Jennifer Talhelm in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

Feds Blame Operator for Mine Disaster
Do you remember this obnoxious liar, Bob Murray?


Feds Blame Operator for Mine Disaster
By JENNIFER DOBNER and PAUL FOY,
AP Utah July 24, 2008

The operator of a collapsed Utah mine violated safety protocols by cutting coal pillars that should have been left standing to prevent cave-ins, federal regulators said Thursday.

The officials said a subsidiary of Ohio-based Murray Energy Corp. undermined other pillars by excavating coal from tunnel floors. They also faulted the company's engineering firm, Agapito Associates Inc. of Grand Junction, Colo., for conducting a flawed evaluation of mining dangers.

Hefty Fines Issued Over Fatal Cave-InHandout / Getty ImagesFederal regulators said Thursday the operator of a collapsed Utah mine violated safety procedures. They said a subsidiary of Murray Energy Corp. cut coal pillars that should have been left standing to prevent cave-ins.

Murray Energy chief Bob Murray has insisted that taking down the pillars, a practice called retreat mining, had nothing to do with the collapse. He argued from the start that it was caused by an earthquake.

At a news conference Thursday, Mine Safety and Health Administration chief Richard Stickler disputed that, instead blaming poor engineering.

"First of all, it was not ?- and I'll repeat not ?- a natural occurring earthquake, but in fact it was a catastrophic outburst of the coal pillars that were used to support the ground above the coal seam," Stickler said.

The agency is fining Murray Energy affiliate Genwal Resources Inc. $1.6 million and Agapito $220,000 for the disaster ?- the largest fines ever imposed on a U.S. coal mining operation, he said.

The Aug. 6 collapse trapped six miners whose bodies haven't been recovered. Three others were killed during a rescue attempt.
MSHA said Genwal Resources misled regulators about the dangers and violated its approved mining plan.

Genwal responded in a lengthy statement contending "politics" and congressional meddling corrupted the MSHA investigation.

"This report does not have the benefit of all of the facts and appears to have been tainted by ten months of relentless political clamoring to lay blame for these tragic events," the company said.

Agapito Associates said it hadn't had a chance to study the report and couldn't immediately comment.

The MSHA report confirmed congressional investigations that faulted Genwal for courting danger at the mine.

Internal company memos revealed that the company was digging into massive blocks of coal that should have been left standing to hold the mine up, according to a March report issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

The same report found that the company was excavating coal from tunnel floors, undermining other coal pillars straining under the tremendous weight of the mountain.

MSHA's report said the operator didn't have permission to mine the "bottom coal." Yet internal company memos made no secret of the practice, which continued within days of the collapse.

Colin King, a lawyer for families suing Murray Energy and affiliates, said the report showed that the company failed to properly report early signs of trouble. MSHA officials said they weren't made aware of a partial collapse of another section of the mine in March 2007, seven months before the fatal summer cave-ins.

And in a previously unreported incident, the report said Genwal Resources failed to report a coal "outburst" on Aug. 3 that half-buried an equipment operator in loose coal. The operator was uninjured, according to the report.

Kristin Kimber, the widow of rescue miner Brandon Kimber, said the report provides her with a sense of closure.

"Now we know the complete truth and we can move on from here," said Kimber, a mother of three. "But there are people I feel who need to be held accountable for their decisions and their actions ... that's what I'm looking forward to."

MSHA didn't escape criticism from a parent agency. A second report issued late Thursday by the U.S. Department of Labor faulted the mining agency for lax oversight. It said MSHA failed to uncover problems and inconsistencies in the engineering and roof-control plans at Crandall Canyon and gambled on a risky rescue operation.

MSHA tapped a district manager, Richard A. Gates of Birmingham, Ala., as chief of the investigative team. Six other members are career MSHA officials.
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Associated Press writer Paul Foy reported from Salt Lake City.