Editorial: Mine safety an oxymoron

Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2007 | 7:08 a.m.

S ix miners may remain entombed in a caved-in Utah coal mine, where a collapse during the rescue attempt last week killed three men and injured six others.

Digging to reach the site of the first collapse at the Crandall Canyon coal mine near Huntington in east-central Utah has been suspended indefinitely. Families of the miners who remain buried and coal industry experts say lax federal oversight is at least partly - if not significantly - to blame for the tragedy.

The section of mine in which workers were digging when the collapse occurred Aug. 6 already had been excavated and abandoned by a previous owner. But new owner Murray Energy Corp. had, with federal regulators' approval, sent crews back into the caverns to harvest the thick pillars of coal that held up the mine's ceiling.

The method, called retreat mining, is dangerous at best, experts say. And the Labor Department's Mine Safety and Health Administration had approved not only the retreat mining one- third of a mile below the surface of the mountain, but also Murray Energy's plan to remove the larger barrier pedestals, or walls of coal separating work sections.

In a story by The Washington Post on Monday, one Utah miner said, "Everybody knows that you don't mess with barriers."

Dave Lauriski, a former mine operator from Utah, told the Post that mine safety enforcement has been inadequate under the Bush administration, which shifted from enforcing safety regulations with fines to working with mine owners for voluntary safety controls.

This latest tragedy proves the fallacy of that policy.