Fatalgram for the roof fall/rib roll accident on July 29, 2010.

http://www.msha.gov/FATALS/2010/FAB10c42.asp

February 21, 2011

A new article published at Environmental Health Perspectives tries to assess the effect of electrification and coal combustion on infant mortality on life expectancy. Results show that when infant mortality started at a high level, increased electrical helped decrease it, but the effect didn’t change life expectancy no matter what the starting life expectancy was. In all scenarios, increased coal combustion increased infant mortality and decreased life expectancy once the beneficial effects of electrification were taken into account.

Read journal article at http://ehponline.org/article/info:doi/10.1289/ehp.1002241 and the Charleston Gazette article on it at http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2011/02/21/coals-impacts-new-study-sorts-out-good-and-bad/

February 17, 2011

MSHA has announced the results of the January 2011 impact inspections. The inspections, which are the result of stepped-up enforcement of safety as a result of the Upper Big Branch disaster in April 2010, issued a total of 208 citations and seven orders to the fifteen coal mines on the list.

MSHA was especially critical of the conditions it found in the RB 12 Mine controlled by Manalapan Mining. Inspectors found three defective gas detectors, two gas detectors that were turned off and had dead batteries, and one gas detector that was used for a pre-shift inspection was completely turned off during the inspection (when turned on it was found to be defective). Inspectors also found several electrocution hazards, that ribs and supports were not in proper condition creating a roof-collapse risk, and coal dust along a conveyor had accumulated causing an explosion risk. RB-12 was issued a total of 27 citations and orders; two other Manalapan mines were inspected resulted in 21 citations and 11 citations respectively.

Read press release at http://www.msha.gov/MEDIA/PRESS/2011/NR110216.pdf and analysis of the report by Ken Ward, Jr. at http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2011/02/17/the-latest-results-of-msha-impact-inspections/ See the master inspection list at http://coaldiver.org/documents/master-inspection-list-targeted-enforcement-jan-2011

February 16, 2010

A new study by researchers at Harvard University found that a full accounting of the environmental and public health costs of burning coal would more than triple the cost of electricity generation. Published by researchers at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment, the study finds that when the full life-cycle of coal is considered from mining to processing to transporting to burning, coal is costing the United States an estimated $174B to $523B annually.

When the best estimate of costs is broken down by category, the cost of “traditional” air pollution is about $188B per year, while the contributions to global warming is about $62B annually. Previous studies have found that coal-based pollution costs $74B in early deaths. Other factors considered included economic subsidies for coal, and mining accidents. “Accounting for these ‘hidden costs’ doubles to triples the price of electricity from coal per kWh, making wind, solar, and other renewable very economically competitive,” said Paul Epstein, associate director of the Harvard Center.

Read article at http://wvgazette.com/News/201102161070

February 16, 2011

An employee at Kayenta Mine was killed in a collision on Friday, February 11. Roy Black, a 55 year old employee with 30 years of experience, was driving his service truck when it collided with a tractor. A load of diesel fuel in his truck ignited and, in spite of the best efforts of emergency responders, the fire incinerated the cab of his truck.

Read article at http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2011/02/16/20110216arizona-mine-worker-killed-identified.html

February 15, 2011

New documents in the case of a proposed coal exporting facility in Washington state seem to indicate the company proposing the terminal withheld information from the county officials in charge of approving the facility. The commissioners of Cowlitz county gave their approval to the terminal late in 2010, the first of several permits that would be required for the terminal to go into operation. That decision which refused to consider any environmental impacts from the mining, transportation or burning of the coal was appealed by the Washington State Department of Ecology as well as several environmental groups.

As part of the discovery process from that lawsuit, Earthjustice has disclosed memos written by Millenium Bulk Terminals, the operator, that indicate that Millenium tried to limit what Cowlitz county knew about the company’s short term plans for how much coal they hoped to move through the terminal. While Millenium stated the terminal would ship 5M tons of coal a year, a significant amount, internal memos show that the company intended immediate expansions of that amount to 20M or 60M tons per year. According to state law, the project’s approval is to be based on its complete form.

Read article at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/us/15coal.html

February 15, 2011

MSHA has announced that it is splitting in two its District 4 office in West Virginia, stating that there are just too many mines in its region to properly inspect. The region has had a number of major mining disasters in recent years including the Upper Big Branch explosion in April which killed 29 and the Aracoma Mine fire in 2007 that killed two miners (an internal audit found the office partially at fault for insufficient oversight). Internal audits also showed that in 2009 the office missed far more inspections than any other (85% of the nation’s total) and found that the office was avoiding more serious enforcement actions because it didn’t have the staff to do them. A 2007 story by Ken Ward, Jr. catalogs many more shortcomings: http://wvgazette.com/News/BeyondSago/200812100396

MSHA has announced that the split will occur later in the year.

Read article at http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/02/15/133786589/mine-safety-office-that-oversees-upper-big-branch-mine-splits

February 11, 2011

The judge presiding over the settlement between the state of Kentucky and its two largest mine operators has ruled that the environmental groups that forced the case will be allowed to intervene in its settlement. The environmental groups had reviewed two years of water monitoring data from mines Frasure Creek and IGC finding what they characterized as 20,000 individual violations of the reporting laws including cases in which water tests had been falsified by submitting multiple xerox copies of the same results with altered dates, violations that could have resulted in $103,000,000 in fines. An investigation by the state of Kentucky confirmed about 2,700 of the violations but found no evidence of fraud and characterized them as non-intentional “paperwork errors.” The settlement proposed a total of $660,000 in fines.

Appalachian Voices of North Carolina, Waterkeeper Alliance of New York, Kentucky Riverkeeper and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth filed an intent to sue in October 2010 because they felt that through the settlement the state of Kentucky was not properly enforcing the Clean Water Act and had primarily ignored the evidence that they had collected during their investigation. Phillip Shepherd, the judge overseeing the settlement agreed. “The Cabinet, by its own admission, has ignored these now admitted violations for years,” Shepherd wrote. “The citizens who brought these violations to light through their own efforts have a right to be heard.”

Read article at http://www.kentucky.com/2011/02/11/1631554/judge-rules-environmental-groups.html and press release at http://appvoices.org/frontporchblog/?show=&tag=ky-litigation

February 10, 2011

2010 was a year that saw some major new coal leases approved including property adjacent to Peabody Energy’s Caballo, Rio Tinto’s Antelope, and Alpha Coal West’s Belle Ayr that total more than an estimated 750M tons of reserves on more than 5000 acres. However, in spite of those victories, the Wyoming Mining Association remains concerns about delays in leasing that have resulted from public notices and public comment periods, lawsuits filed to block the leases and length agency reviews of the actions.

While some of the delays can be attributed to changes in the Bureau of Land Management that resulted from the 2008 election, others seem to reflect a change in the public’s perception of mining. As an example, the number of responses received from public comment periods has skyrocketed in recent years, and while environmental groups are still commenting on the leases, the great majority of comments (14000 in one case) actually come from private individuals. Shannon Anderson, an organized for the Powder River Basin Resource Council, points out that these comments are crucial to the EPA providing appropriate review prior to leases being issued. “We do appreciate that BLM does a thorough environmental impact statement process, and that is necessary for every single lease. So I do believe that that’s important. And I think that’s where the delay – if you want to call it that – is really coming from,” she said. The coal mines “have significant impacts on our groundwater resources, on our land resources, on our wildlife, on air quality. And we do need to take the time to know what the impacts are before we move forward.”

Read article at http://trib.com/college/wyoming/article_a874f6ed-0600-54d9-a78c-498c821fab46.html

February 10, 2011

An infusion from state and national governments in 2010 resulted in the introduction of a long list of clean coal research projects in Wyoming, most of which are hybrid industrial/academic/governmental in nature. One, the High Plains Gasification-Advanced Technology Center, is a $100M research center for coal gasification and is a joint venture between GE Capital and the U of Wyoming that is designed to gasify up to 10 tons of coal per day once construction is completed in 2012.

Other projects include research on capturing carbon dioxide during coal combustion and its long-term underground sequestration, making more efficient cooling towers, and underground coal gasification, a technique where coal is heated up to very high temperatures while it is still underground so that it gives off natural gas.

Read article at http://trib.com/college/wyoming/article_6ad9f936-47aa-581e-8c6b-b771e9ae59cb.html