Here’s the latest SEC filing from Alpha Natural Resources:

There’s a fair amount of coverage out there this morning from yesterday’s start of the West Virginia Coal Association’s annual symposium, being held over at the Charleston Civic Center. A few examples:

– Vicki Smith from the AP reported that MSHA officials say the nation’s coal mines have made huge strides in safety, pointing to a dramatic reduction in the number of accidents and injuries in the nation’s single largest district in southern West Virginia.

– We ran my story in the Gazette about a presentation in which former U.S. Attorney Bill Wilmoth, who defended one-time Massey security director Hughie Elbert Stover, advised coal industry officials to be much more cautious in agreeing to talk with federal investigators, now that prosecutors have begun stepping up criminal cases involving lying to those investigators.

– The State Journal’s Taylor Kuykendall posted stories about extended cut mining, and about MSHA’s views of post-UBB compliance around the industry.

I wandered over to the Civic Center for some of yesterday’s afternoon presentations, and was treated to a talk by our friend Tom Clarke, director of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Mining and Reclamation.

As WVDEP officials unfortunately do every year at this industry event, Tom played to his audience, trying to be funny with a couple of silly cracks about his fellow public servants at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. For example: “We’ve been getting along reasonably well with them, as long as we don’t make them work too hard.”

For some reason, Tom also was critical of efforts by U.S. EPA to incorporate certain portions of DEP mining permits into his agency’s Clean Water Act pollution discharge permits for mining operations. Why would that be such a bad thing? Well, Tom noted that if “performance standards” for things like toxic materials handling plans are made part of the Clean Water Act permits, it might allow citizen groups to bring lawsuits in federal court to actually have those provisions of the permits enforced.  Gosh, the last thing anybody would want is for citizens to actually get to play a meaningful role in the environmental regulatory process and do things that WVDEP has been unable or unwilling to do … things like, oh, I don’t know — forcing a major mining operator to spend hundreds of millions of dollars cleaning up its selenium pollution.

Tom spent a lot of time dissecting the recent U.S. EPA objection letter for the CONSOL of Kentucky Buffalo Mountain permit, and warning coal executives of all of the sorts of things EPA was questioning in that permit — kind of a cautionary tale for what other operators might be in store for from EPA in coming months. But I guess I must have missed the part where Tom explained exactly what his agency was doing to reduce the “pervasive and irreversible impacts” of mountaintop removal on the environment — let alone what WVDEP is doing about the increasingly clear links between living near mountaintop removal mining and having a greater risk of serious health problems like cancer and birth defects.

Don’t look for much discussion of those important issues at the symposium … but if you have time to drop by on Friday, you can catch not one, not two, not three, but four coal lobbyists in a panel discussion called “Obama’s No Job Zone.” And you can hear the lawyers from Bailey and Glasser talk about their taxpayer-funded lawsuit to help the coal industry try to put a stop to the Obama crackdown on mountaintop removal.

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Here’s today’s announcement from MSHA:

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration today launched the third phase of an outreach and enforcement program designed to strengthen efforts to prevent mining fatalities. “Rules to Live By III: Preventing Common Mining Deaths” will focus on 14 safety standards that were chosen because violations related to each have been cited as contributing to at least five mining accidents and at least five deaths during the 10-year period of Jan. 1, 2001, to Dec. 31, 2010.

“The goal of this phase of ‘Rules to Live By’ is to reduce numbers of deaths and injuries from the targeted standards by having mine operators identify and correct all hazardous conditions, direct MSHA enforcement toward confirming that violations related to these conditions are not present at mines, and ensure miners are better trained to recognize and avoid these particular hazards,” said Joseph A. Main, assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health.

From 2001 through 2010, 609 miners lost their lives in workplace accidents. Violations associated with eight coal standards contributed to 75 deaths during this period, while violations associated with six metal and nonmetal standards contributed to 50 deaths.

The coal standards are as follows:

75.362(a)(1) on-shift examination

77.404(a) machinery and equipment; operation and maintenance

77.405(b) performing work from a raised position; safeguards

77.1000 highwalls, pits and spoil banks; plans

77.1605(b) loading and haulage equipment; installations

77.1606(a) loading and haulage equipment; inspection and maintenance

77.1607(b) loading and haulage equipment; operation

77.1713(a) daily inspection of surface coal mine; certified person; reports of inspection

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Idaho Gov. Butch Otter waits for the commencement of a town hall meeting Monday, Jan. 23, 2012 in Wallace, Idaho where residents and business owners sought answers about the recent Lucky Friday Mine closure. (AP Photo/Coeur d’Alene Press, Jerome A. Pollos)

After 29 miners died in April 2010 at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine here in West Virginia, a lot of people — including the local political leadership — made a lot of noise asking why, if conditions were so bad at Upper Big Branch, federal Mine Safety and Health Administration inspectors didn’t shut the place down. Well, if you really wonder about the answer to that question, look no farther than what’s going on right now out in Idaho, where the local media and the governor are raising quite a stink over closure of the much-troubled Lucky Friday silver mine.

Here’s the latest news from The Associated Press:

Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter plans to ask federal regulators to hold a town hall meeting in northern Idaho and further explain the decision to close one of the nation’s deepest underground mines for safety reasons.

Otter traveled Monday to Wallace to discuss the closure of the Lucky Friday Mine earlier this month and economic conditions in the depressed Silver Valley region, where dozens of workers recently received a pink slip.

There was standing room only as Otter held a public meeting Monday in Wallace to discuss the shutdown of the mine with local families and business owners. Otter said he would ask federal mine regulators to hold a public meeting in the Silver Valley to further explain their decision.

“When I get home, that letter will be on its way to Washington, D.C.,” said Otter, who has also met with Hecla representatives to discuss the closure.

What exactly is MSHA up to here?

The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration ordered the operation closed following an investigation prompted by a series of accidents that killed two miners over the last year. The agency ordered Hecla Mining Co. for safety reasons to scrub the walls of the mile-deep shaft that is the main entrance to the mine.

Federal inspectors determined that sand and concrete material that had leaked from a pipe into a mine shaft over the years needed to be removed. The material is in the mile-deep Silver Shaft, the mine’s main access shaft, and workers will spend the next year essentially power washing the material from the walls of the shaft.

The shaft problems were flagged during a Dec. 20 inspection following two fatal accidents and a rock burst that trapped seven miners.

The Mine Safety and Health Administration’s closure order was initially issued Jan. 5, but Hecla officials said Jan. 11 that they had been negotiating for several days with federal regulators before resigning themselves to the lengthy shutdown.

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Sad news this morning from Virginia, where the first U.S. coal-mining death of 2012 has occurred. The accident happened  on Jan. 11 at CONSOL Energy’s Buchanan Mine where, according to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration:

… A miner was struck in the face and forehead by a damaged fire fighting valve under high pressure on a 6-inch waterline The valve had been isolated by shutting off cut-off valves both inby and outby the damaged valve. It is believed one of the valves was allowing water to leak through, which caused pressure to build up at the damaged valve. The valve blew off while the victim was in the process of removing it, striking him in the face/forehead area. Another miner was hit in the shoulder by the valve after it contacted the initial victim. The miner was transported to a local medical facility and then to a larger hospital in Bristol, VA. He is reported to be stabilized, but in critical condition. The second miner did not appear to be hurt but was taken to the hospital to be checked as a precautionary measure.

MSHA added:

On Wednesday, the doctors attending the injured miner removed him from life support yesterday at 4:12 PM after brain activity ceased. He was unable to breath on his own and died shortly thereafter. This is the first Coal fatality for 2012.

Bill Archer at the Bluefield Daily Telegraph has identified the miner who died as Joe Saunders, 44, of Princeton, W.Va.

Here’s the report just out from the AP’s Larry Messina:

For two West Virginia lawmakers who lost fathers in coal mining accidents, preventing disasters like the 2010 Upper Big Branch explosion has taken a personal turn.

House Speaker Rick Thompson was not yet born when a roof fall killed his father at age 21. Delegate Charlene Marshall’s dad died in the mines when she was 6.

Thompson and Marshall are among 11 lawmakers who introduced legislation Monday offering numerous ways to target unsafe mines.

The bipartisan bill would identify and then remedy the enforcement problems cited in the reports by Upper Big Branch investigators. That disaster killed 29 miners.

It also seeks to allow miners’ families to take part when fatal accidents are investigated. Both Thompson and Marshall said their families were left in the dark after their fathers died.

This, of course, comes after Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin talked up mine safety in his State of the State address, outlining a mixed package of measures, without actually having the legislation decided upon and ready to introduce. The Daily Mail’s Ry Rivard tweets that the governor’s bill should be introduced by Friday and that the plan is for a House Judiciary subcommittee to work on the competing proposals.

UPDATED: Ry has done a blog post on the Daily Mail’s Capitol Notebook, with this great quote from Delegate Mike Caputo, a UMWA representative, about whether mine safety legislation should be based on a consensus approach:

“I’m not saying ‘Something we can call agree on,’ I’m not saying ‘Compromise,’ I’m saying something that protects the health and safety of miners,” Caputo said. “If the industry doesn’t like it, that’s just too damn bad.”

You can read the bill for yourself here, and I’ve posted a fact sheet being distributed by the House leadership here. (note that two of the bill’s 11 co-sponsors are Republicans — one from Upshur County, where the Sago Disaster happened, and one from Raleigh County, where Upper Big Branch occurred).

Among other things, the bill would make it a crime for anyone to knowingly commit or willingly permit violations of state mine safety regulations. Current state law applies that sort of a standard to corporate mine operators and to any director, officer or agent of the corporation who knowingly authorized, ordered or carried out the violation.

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A government photo shows the SCSRs that Sago miners tried to use to survive after the January 2006 explosion.

Later this week, the National Academy of Sciences will begin a new study of mine rescue called, Mine Safety: Essential Components of Self Escape.  A summary describes the effort this way:

An ad-hoc committee of inter-disciplinary experts will conduct a study to identify and synthesize the literature relevant to understanding “self escape” in the context of mine safety. The committee will review literature in areas such as judgment and decision making under conditions of uncertainty and stress, training of personnel in high-risk professions, technological advancements that may facilitate self escape (e.g. signaling), physiological and biomechanical effects of stress, and systems approaches to improve the likelihood of success self escape. This study will focus on underground coal mining but with the understanding that findings and recommendations for that industry will likely be informative to the underground metal/nonmetal mining industry. Basically, the stated purpose of this study is: What does it take to give mine workers self-escape capabilities during a disaster?

Apparently, the National Institutes for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, asked for this study.  They study committee is going to address these issues:

1. Define “self escape” in the context of mining disasters;

2. Identify competencies which are essential for mine workers to have in order to allow them to execute self-escape methods, which will include cognitive competencies as in hazard recognition and decision making, as well as physical abilities;

3. Suggest the most effective training methods for the mining industry to adopt in order to impart those skills to miners and to validate individual competency levels of same;

4. Consider systems factors, such as escape way conditions, availability of refuge alternatives, or other technologies (such as through the implementation of communication systems and sensors) that would contribute to a successful self escape by providing the miner with improved decision-making capabilities, e.g. through the availability of information, and/or providing physical conditions that would make it easier to escape under adverse conditions;

5. Identify any “gaps” in scientific findings that could inform this issue, thus help to set a possible research agenda for future funding strategies for NIOSH.

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Here’s the statement issued this afternoon by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration:

Preliminary data from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration released today reveal that 37 miners died in work-related accidents at the nation’s mines in 2011. There were 21 coal mining and 16 metal/nonmetal mining fatalities last year, compared with 48 and 23, respectively, in 2010, making 2011 the year with the second-lowest number of mining deaths since statistics were first recorded in 1910.

Of the 37 fatalities reported, 12 occurred at surface coal mines, 11 at surface metal/nonmetal mines, nine at underground coal mines and five at underground metal/nonmetal mines. Nine workers died in accidents involving machinery – six in coal mines and three in metal/nonmetal mines – making it the leading cause of fatal mining accidents.

Kentucky had the most mining deaths – eight – in 2011, followed by West Virginia with six and Ohio with three. All but one of those deaths occurred in coal mines. Several of the larger coal-producing states, including Alabama, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Utah, experienced zero mine fatalities last year.

“Mining deaths are preventable,” said Joseph A. Main, assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health. “The year that the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 passed, 273 miners died and, since that time, fatality numbers have steadily declined. In order to prevent mine deaths, operators must have in place effective safety and health management programs that are constantly evaluated, find-and-fix programs to identify and eliminate mine hazards, and training for all mining personnel.”

MSHA has undertaken a number of measures to prevent mining deaths: increased surveillance and strategic enforcement through impact inspections at mines with troubling compliance histories; enhanced pattern of violations actions; special initiatives such as “Rules to Live By,” which focuses attention on the most common causes of mining deaths; and outreach efforts such as “Safety Pro in a Box,” which provides guidance to the metal/nonmetal mining industry on best practices and compliance responsibilities.

“It takes the entire mining community to continue to reach new milestones in health and safety,” said Main. “While fewer miners are dying on the job, we can never alter our focus because, as we know, things can change in a moment. Miners need the reassurance that they will return home safe and healthy after each shift.”

Six years ago, an explosion ripped through International Coal Group’s Sago Mine in Upshur County, W.Va. Twelve miners died and another barely got out alive.

The miners killed were:

Tom Anderson, Terry Helms, Marty Bennett, Martin Toler, Marshall Winans, Junior Hamner, Jesse Jones, Jerry Groves, James Bennett, Jackie Weaver, Fred Ware, and David Lewis.

And as I’ve said before, it’s always worth remembering these words from the last Sen. Robert C. Byrd, spoken on the Senate floor after Sago:

I’ve seen it all before. First, the disaster, then the weeping and then the outrage. But in a few weeks, when the outrage is gone, when the ink on the editorials is dry, everything returns to business as usual.