A man on his tricycle cart loaded with coal and pedestrians wait to cross to an underneath highway in Beijing, China Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2010. China’s government said Tuesday it still is a developing country despite becoming the second-largest economy, reflecting its reluctance to take on new obligations on climate change and other issues. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
This week ended with NPR’s fascinating story about what two Massey Energy employees may have been doing underground for hours after the explosion at the company’s Upper Big Branch Mine.
But in last week’s Friday roundup, I neglected to mention a Huffington Post commentary by Dan Froomkin, West Virginia mine disaster leads to more enforcement and disclosure:
… As generally happens in response to a major accident, the regulatory environment is changing.
After the explosion, MSHA was hammered for letting mines with alarming safety records exploit loopholes to evade fines and stay open. A June memo from the Department of Labor’s Inspector General found that between 2007 and 2009, MSHA apparently declined to subject some problem mines to closer scrutiny because it was too much work.
Since the April explosion, Main has dramatically stepped up MSHA’s enforcement activities.
A reform bill making its way through Congress would expand the mine regulator’s authority, but what’s already changed is that inspectors are now using preexisting powers to a much fuller extent — particularly their ability to conduct surprise inspections and pull workers out of mines with serious health hazards until those hazards have been abated.
Perhaps more importantly:
One of the most far-reaching changes to the mining industry since the April explosion may actually end up being the insertion — at the request of Rockefeller and his fellow West Virginia Democrat, the late Sen. Robert Byrd — of an amendment to the recently passed financial reform bill.
The amendment, now law, requires publicly-traded mining companies to include serious mine safety violations in their public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Unlike the citations themselves, these SEC filings are closely tracked by shareholders and industry analysts. Indeed, on August 23, Massey filed a notice with the SEC acknowledging that MSHA had, in an enforcement order issued on July 21, accused it of creating an “imminent danger” of death or serious physical injuries.
As it turns out, MSHA investigators working their way through the Upper Big Branch mine had discovered a two-by-two-by-three-foot box labeled “explosives” in a conveyor belt tunnel. The explosives had nothing to do with the April 5 explosion, but nevertheless, this was a big deal.
And because it was in an SEC filing, the market noticed.
Massey Energy stock prices dropped suddenly, eventually falling $4.13, or 13 percent, over the next four days.
In other coal-related news and commentary:
– The U.K. Independent had this story about the “greed and graft” behind the Chilean mining near-disaster.
– Banks are growing more and more concerned about lending that supports environmentally risky propositions like mountaintop removal coal mining, according to this New York Times piece.
– The National Mining Association says the Obama administration’s crackdown on mountaintop removal is based on bad science, according to a press release and formal comments submitted by the group to EPA.
– Peabody Energy has been ordered to pay nearly $174,000 of $230,000 proposed fines tied to questioned safety at a southern Illinois mine that federal regulators had claimed continues to endanger workers.
– Coal Tattoo reader Casey pointed out to me this Wall Street Journal piece about the proposed reforms in the management of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
– My buddy Jim Bruggers at the Courier-Journal in Louisville had this story and a related blog post questioning some the methods used in a big study about toxic coal ash.
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