MILLER SEEKS FEDERAL CRIMINAL PROBE
OF CRANDALL CANYON MINE BLASTS e

Saying a top coal company official may have withheld vital safety information--about a previous accident--from federal mine safety officials, House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) formally asked the GOP Bush government’s Justice Department for an investigation to see if criminal violations occurred before August’s Crandall Canyon, Utah, fatal coal mine explosions.

Miller’s 4-page April 29 letter was attached to his committee staff’s 158-page investigative report about the two blasts at the mine. The first entrapped and killed six miners and the second killed three rescuers, including a Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) inspector.

Miller’s letter and the report found safety deficiencies at the mine--notably minimization of a prior blast there--by the mine’s owner, Murray Energy Corp., and by then mine-manager Laine W. Adair. The report does not charge any other individuals, including mine owner Robert Murray, by name with responsibility for the disaster.

But it does say that “Adair, individually or in conspiracy with others, willfully concealed or covered a material fact or made materially false representations” to MSHA about conditions at the mine, and specifically about the preceding March accident. That accident was not fatal, but raised questions about the firm’s “retreat mining” plan.

Retreat mining is a technique in coal mining where, after a mine is excavated, companies order miners to extract coal from pillars that had been left intact to hold up the mine’s ceiling, backing out of the mine as they do so. But that technique created a “bump”--a burst pillar--in March, the report said. Adair minimized its significance.

At his May 8 press conference releasing the report, Miller also criticized MSHA for lack of vigilance. He said, citing the report, that despite prior problems at Crandall Canyon, MSHA uncritically approved Murray Energy’s retreat mining plan, and did not inspect the mine while the retreat was occurring.

He also noted that intensive computer analysis of conditions in the mine, carried out by consultants the committee hired, showed the retreat mining should not have pulled down the pillars supporting Crandall Canyon’s roof. Doing so puts untenable pressure on remaining pillars, causing them to burst and the explosions to occur.

And Miller said greed was also a reason for the tragedy. With the price of coal rising, Murray Energy--a non-union shop whose miners did not have the Mine Workers there to speak for them against unsafe conditions--engaged in the dangerous retreat mining in order to make more profits from the mine, he said.

Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts, who has cited Crandall Canyon as a reason for the further mine safety legislation that Miller’s committee passed earlier this year, hailed the report. He said it proved--again--UMWA’s assertion that the fatal blasts should never have occurred.

“The investigation...provides further confirmation of what the UMWA has said from the outset: The plan submitted by the mine operator for mining the coal was flawed and should never have been submitted, and the Mine Safety and Health Administration should never have approved it,” he said. Roberts demanded the Justice Department “fully and completely investigate these matters, without regard to where that may lead.

“Yet for all the analyses, all the insights and all the investigations, the fact remains that nine miners are dead today who should not be. Family members have wept and been left inconsolable. Wives, parents and children are without husbands, sons and fathers. Our nation and its leaders can no longer watch these tragedies unfold, wring our hands and say, ‘How horrible,’ then stand aside and do little to prevent them,” Roberts said.

MSHA withheld comment on Miller’s report, since the agency hadn’t had a chance to read it. It is conducting its own investigation. Adair’s attorney called Miller’s letter to the Justice Department seeking a criminal probe “deeply disappointing and utterly unjustified.”