 
In this photo taken March 28, 2009, mine operator Dallen McFarland, right, inspects the teeth of a continuous mining machine at the Horizon Coal Mine outside Helper, Utah. Horizon is considered one of Utah several deep mines that have come under more federal regulation in recent years. (AP Photo /George Frey)
That’s right, I’m doing this week’s Friday roundup on Thursday. Unless there’s some major news, Coal Tattoo is going to take a couple of days off for the holiday weekend.
Let’s start off with a story distributed earlier in the week by The Associated Press, looking back on changes to the deep mining industry in Utah following the Crandall Canyon Mine Disaster two years ago. In this story, the AP’s Paul Foy writes that the state’s mining operators “are backing away from rich coal reserves held deep under the ground.”
Coal mines have come under intense scrutiny in every part of the country, with the Mine Safety and Health Administration tripling fines against all coal mines last year, to $152.7 million.
But in Utah, where easy access to coal was exhausted more than a decade ago, operators say they have been hit especially hard because of the extreme depths at which they dig for coal.
In this March 28, 2009 photo, mine manager Joe Fielder shows the inside of a hardened rescue capsule at the Horizon Coal Mine outside Helper, Utah. Under a recent Mine Safety and Health Administration ruling, the mine had to buy this hardened, trailer-size rescue capsule for positioning inside the mine. (AP Photo/George Frey)
The risks are compounded by a common method of coal removal called retreat mining, which has operators sometimes flirting with disaster by deliberately inducing cave-ins.
The story has an incredibly telling quote from top MSHA official Kevin Stricklin, about the way MSHA handled mining plan approvals — like the one that a Department of Labor Inspector General’s report concluded MSHA never should have approved for the Crandall Canyon Mine:
“In the past, anything an operator submitted – if it was a reputable operator – we took their word for it.”
You gotta give Kevin credit for being honest about the way MSHA was operating under the Bush administration, in comments that back up the independent review of Crandall Canyon conducted by a couple of former MSHA officials.
Also on the mine safety front this week, we had this story concerning the July 2002 near-disaster at Quecreek:
WASHINGTON – A federal panel yesterday said that a judge should reconsider the $110,000 in fines he levied against two companies in the 2002 Quecreek Mine accident in Western Pennsylvania.
The Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission’s preliminary decision was in response to challenges by PBS Coals Inc. and Musser Engineering Inc. against the fines, levied by Administrative Law Judge Robert Lesnick in November. A federal safety panel had previously recommended $5,000 fines for each company.
And from South Africa, Reuters reports that:
Some 277 workers have died in South African mines in the past year, almost half of them in illegal operations, Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu said on Thursday.
Another Reuters story explained:
Deutsche Bank lit a seven-storey-high sign in the middle of Manhattan on Thursday that counts the total amount of greenhouse gases trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere.
The bank said it was the world’s first sign to show real-time measurement of the gases blamed for global warming and hoped it would spark more public debate on how to reduce emissions.
Bloomberg reports:
Coal India Ltd., the world’s biggest coal producer, wants mining approvals sped up to help it boost production to meet a widening supply shortfall that is forcing more imports, Chairman Partha Bhattacharyya said.
Faster consent will allow the company to increase output by 10 percent, above its target of 7.5 percent, from a current production of 404 million metric tons a year, Bhattacharyya said in an interview. Domestic output has failed to meet demand, particularly from power generation, requiring the nation to increase imports by an average 10 percent to 15 percent a year.
And also on the international scene, we had this story from the Hungry Horse News in Montana:
A United Nations delegation will travel to Glacier National Park and the North Fork to see for itself the threats of mining and coal bed methane development could have on the Park.
Meeting in Spain last week the 21-member United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s World Heritage Committee voted unanimously to send a mission to Waterton-Glacier and the Canadian Flathead.
Glacier faces threats from coal mining and coal bed methane development in the Canadian Flathead. It’s feared that pollution from such mines would, in turn, pollute the Park. The Cline Mining Co. has proposed a coal mine in the North Fork’s headwaters and British Petroleum has proposed coal bed methane development in the region.
The North Fork makes up the entire western border of Glacier and is currently nearly pristine. The Canadian Flathead is also a beautiful place and is largely uninhabited.
Closer to home, actress Daryl Hannah wrote an account of her arrest at the anti-mountaintop removal protest down at Marsh Fork Elementary School in Raleigh County, W.Va, for The Huffington Post. And the big U.S. Senate hearing on mountaintop removal got more coverage from McClatchy Newspapers and West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
Columnist Carl Hiaasen gave us his take on the Caperton v. Massey case:
Well, if you lived in West Virginia, your faith in the judiciary was pretty much blown to smithereens the day that Brent Benjamin refused to take himself off the Massey Coal case.
The high court’s ruling was purposely broad and made no assertion that Benjamin voted in favor of Massey Coal because of his connection to Blankenship. It said judges have a responsibility to remove themselves from cases involving large donors.
If nothing else, though, the U.S. Supreme Court’s action in the Massey Coal fiasco should make judges more wary about taking on a case in which a political donor has an interest.
The Pump Handle reminds us that President Barack Obama still hasn’t gotten around to naming an assistance secretary of Labor to run MSHA.
Several readers have asked for more information about where the climate bill might be headed in the Senate, so I thought I would pass on some more coverage that I found interesting:
– Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog promises more on the Senate consideration of the bill, but already has provided his own detailed look at Who Voted for the Climate Bill? (And why?)
– Kevin Drum at Mother Jones asks if the Waxman-Markey Bill is really worth it.
– The Huffington Post looks at how the fight over the bill is just beginning.
– As Coal Tattoo reader Red Desert pointed out, I’ve linked several times to the column in which Paul Krugman of the New York Times called a vote against the American Clean Energy and Security Act “treason against the planet.” But Red Desert was right to suggest reading other New York Times commentaries by Tom Friedman and David Brooks.
Finally, I’ll write more about this next week, but mark your calendars for the July 11 premier of Coal Country: The Movie, a film by Mari-Lynn Evans and Phylis Geller. It’s at 7 p.m. in the LaBelle Theater in South Charleston. It’s free, but seating is limited.
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