Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship...

[coyotes_geek]

Yes, I read that about the coal dust, but I never saw an acceptable level vs. the measured level. Was it really a dangerous level, or just above a ridiculous safe level?

Not being in that industry I'm not sure how mining regulations are set up. In my industry, when it comes to combustable materials and/or hazardous gases there's no such distinction between "dangerous level" and "safe level". There's the defined level and anything above it is dangerous. Since the mine got cited and/or fined over it, it's safe to assume that whatever the measured level was, it was above the acceptable level.

I have seen my share of ridiculously stupid safety regulations. Because of that, the mention of them, without measurable specifics, have no effect of making me believe they were negligent of actual safety.

I can only speak to my industry, but my experience has been different. The safety regulations I've come across can be burdensome, and they're burdensome due to the massive number of defined and measurable specifics that you're supposed to keep track of.

As for the issue of negligence, that's missing the point IMO. Safety regulations aren't about defining where the bar is to avoid liability. They're about making sure stuff like this doesn't happen. Just because Massey might not have done anything meeting the legal bar of negligence doesn't mean they haven't done anything wrong.

Accidents happen. There are sudden things that occur that cannot be stopped by safety regulations. Especially in this type of work.

Per my company's safety training, of which I get a lot, 99% of all workplace accidents are preventable. I will all but guarantee that when the cause of this explosion is fully investigated that there is something that could have been done to prevent it. Something that somebody knew about ahead of time. Whether or not that translates into legal liability is for the courts to decide. But the "accidents happen" mindset is one that has been universally rejected in every single safety program I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of them.

[Wild Cobra]

Yes, I read that about the coal dust, but I never saw an acceptable level vs. the measured level. Was it really a dangerous level, or just above a ridiculous safe level?

Not being in that industry I'm not sure how mining regulations are set up. In my industry, when it comes to combustable materials and/or hazardous gases there's no such distinction between "dangerous level" and "safe level". There's the defined level and anything above it is dangerous. Since the mine got cited and/or fined over it, it's safe to assume that whatever the measured level was, it was above the acceptable level.

I agree, but remember, there are a minimum of two levels of coal dust we are dealing with. If you look at a MSDS for coal dust, you will find the flammable level is 50 grams per cubic meter. That's a whole lot of coal. However, the permissible exposure limit is only 2 milligrams per cubic meter. Huge difference. I will offer the more likely proposal is the miners not wearing their respirators at the levels they are suppose to. This is a hard thing to control, and the probable violation.

I have seen my share of ridiculously stupid safety regulations. Because of that, the mention of them, without measurable specifics, have no effect of making me believe they were negligent of actual safety.

I can only speak to my industry, but my experience has been different. The safety regulations I've come across can be burdensome, and they're burdensome due to the massive number of defined and measurable specifics that you're supposed to keep track of.

Well, I've now worked for more than 30 years with mandated safety practices. Some are really stupid to the point of making some jobs very hard. Some weren't drastic enough, like when I worked with Hydroflouric Acid. Real scary stuff.

As for the issue of negligence, that's missing the point IMO. Safety regulations aren't about defining where the bar is to avoid liability. They're about making sure stuff like this doesn't happen. Just because Massey might not have done anything meeting the legal bar of negligence doesn't mean they haven't done anything wrong.

It depends on where the safety regulations originate from. Some are simply ridiculous.

Accidents happen. There are sudden things that occur that cannot be stopped by safety regulations. Especially in this type of work.

Per my company's safety training, of which I get a lot, 99% of all workplace accidents are preventable.

I think that's a pretty standard tag line, and most accidents I have ever seen are because of employees not following procedure rather than management.

I will all but guarantee that when the cause of this explosion is fully investigated that there is something that could have been done to prevent it.

Probably so, but I doubt it will be coal dust. There will be a political push to find the owners at fault. However, with what i have learned over the years about mining explosions, I'll bet it's methane gas buildup that was present before detected. Gas that suddenly built up at the dug farther.

Something that somebody knew about ahead of time. Whether or not that translates into legal liability is for the courts to decide. But the "accidents happen" mindset is one that has been universally rejected in every single safety program I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of them.

We are both guessing, but mining is simply a dangerous business. People have died for years in this industry, and will in the future. It's a risk these people know about and accept.

[boutons_deux]

safety and security always have both costs and inconveniences (training, surveillance, enforcement, penalties).

That's why corps implement the minimum of both and simply hate OSHA, which the Repugs have been castrating and trying to destroy since its inception.

[Nbadan]

Recipe for disaster? The elementary school, the coal silo, the coal preparation plant, the dam, the sludge lake and the mountaintop removal.

Photo: 2006

Photo: Three years later

The Marsh Fork Elementary School in Raleigh County with the light green lawn and white buildings is in the foreground at left. Just behind the school is a blue bend in the Marsh Fork of the Little Coal River. Across the river to the right is the coal silo--just 150 feet from the school. Though not readily visible, train tracks run beside the silo. Concerned parents worry that coal dust and the chemicals used in processing coal and loading it from the silo onto the train are drifting onto school grounds. Prove this yourself--walk barefoot through the playground and take a look at your toes.

Across the river and left are the blue buildings of the Goals Coal Processing Plant, a subsidiary of Massey Energy. To learn more about the dangerous chemicals used in coal prep plants, see the Why Worry section of this website. Above the prep plant, a road zigzags up the face of an earthen dam holding back billions of gallons of coal sludge in Massey's leaking Shumate impoundment. A worker at this site, now alleges he is gravely ill from the chemicals used on site. He says portions of this dam where not constructed properly and Mine Safety and Health Administration records support his statements. Beyond the impoundment --that black lake of toxic goo--another Massey Energy subsidiary, Independence Coal, is starting an 1,849 acre strip mine. How crazy to have blasting at this strip mine above an impoundment held by a violation-prone earthen dam--just 400 yards from an elementary school!

Link

[Wild Cobra]

The dam is only holding back a small area rather than a whole river, etc.

I did detailed look with Google Maps. I'd be far more worried about the natural flood plane the school sits in rather than the dam, or coal slurry.

[Nbadan]

The dam is only holding back a small area rather than a whole river, etc

Unfortunately, we don't live in a world of mutually-exclusives. The contaminated water could seep into local water supply through porous ground or other means of contamination...

[boutons_deux]

- SpeakEasy - http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy -

Massey Energy’s Costly Environmental Record

Posted By Sarah Laskow On April 10, 2010 @ 4:19 am In Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Coal consumption has costs — this week’s explosion at a West Virginia mine, which killed 25, made that clear. Those costs aren’t limited to human lives, either. Massey Energy Co., the owner of the West Virginia mine, has not just racked up safety violations but also consistently disregarded the environmental effects of its work.

Black marks on Massey’s record

This week’s explosion is far from the first debacle associated with a Massey project, and past incidents have had disastrous impacts on the environment.

In 2000, a break in a Massey-owned reservoir, filled with coal waste, caused more damage than the Exxon Valdez spill, Steve Benen writes at The Washington Monthly. Clara Bingham described the flood of sludge for the magazine in 2005:

“The gooey mixture of black water and coal tailings traveled downstream through Coldwater and Wolf creeks, and later through the river’s main stem, Tug Fork. Ten days later, an inky plume appeared in the Ohio River. On its 75-mile path of destruction, the sludge obliterated wildlife, killed 1.6 million fish, ransacked property, washed away roads and bridges, and contaminated the water systems of 27,623 people.”

A year later, another 30,000 gallons of sludge poured into a river in Madison, WV, “with nary a peep from Massey,” Kevin Connor points out at AlterNet.

The company routinely scorns environmental regulations, too, as Andy Kroll reports for Mother Jones:

“Between 2000 and 2006, Massey violated the Clean Water Act more than 4,500 times by dumping sediment and leftover mining waste into rivers in Kentucky and West Virginia, the EPA said in 2008. (Environmental groups say the EPA’s tally is a lowball figure; they estimate that the true number of violations is more than 12,000.) As a result of these breaches of the law, the company agreed to pay the EPA a $20 million settlement.”

It appears that prior spills have not chastened Massey, either. Brooke Jarvis at Yes! Magazine notes that the company stores 8.2 billion gallons of coal sludge in the same West Virginia county suffering from this week’s explosion, and that two months ago, “West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection issued a notice of violation because the dam failed to meet safety requirements.”

Don Blankenship, denier!

Massey’s owner, Don Blankenship, has as dark a record as his company on environmental issues. Blankenship believes in the “survival of the most productive,” Mike Lillis writes at The Washington Independent, which means that safety and environmental concerns come second. He “loves to slam ‘greeniacs’ for believing in things like climate change,” says Nick Baumann at Mother Jones. The Colorado Independent’s David O. Williams calls Blankenship “a notorious right-wing climate change denier and outspoken critic of the policies of ‘Obama bin Laden,’” and notes that Blankenship is on the board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has tried its hardest to squelch any climate legislation eking through Congress.

Methane and mountaintop removal

Although Massey and Blankenship stand out for their scorn of the environment, all coal production extracts a cost. Accidents and violations like Massey’s can devastate forests and streams, but coal’s biggest environmental impact comes when it is burned and pours tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. As Yes! Magazine’s Jarvis puts it, “Coal may be cheap now, but that’s simply because we’re not counting—and don’t even know how to count—the long-term costs.”

The Obama administration has taken some steps towards limiting coal production. Last week the EPA announced restrictions that would limit mountaintop removal mining. But those regulations won’t ban the practice altogether. The Senate could, in theory, take up that task: Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) introduced a bill a year ago that would make mountaintop removal mining so expensive it would be economically infeasible, effectively banning the practice, Mike Lillis reports for The Washington Independent. Although the bill accrued a few more sponsors during 2009, mostly liberal Democrats like Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), it hasn’t attracted much attention and is still sitting in the Environment and Public Works Committee.

In the Mountain West, the Bureau of Land Management is opening up federal lands for coal mining and claiming it can’t require companies to flare off or capture methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, David O. Williams reports for The Colorado Independent. Without methane capture, the new mines would pour carbon pollution into the atmosphere. This BLM stance, Williams writes, has green advocates in Colorado “longingly reminiscing about the bygone days of the Bush administration,” which said it would require companies to manage methane.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

=========

dubya/Repugs destroyed the already weak EPA, to let the corps run rampant over the environment, poisoning water, land, air. All hail the corps and the capitalist financiers.

[Wild Cobra]

aDan, when you focus on articles that blow the facts out of proportion, why should I believe them?

Have you compared that with the larger spill the TVA had in 2008? Why just target one man's company?

The spill was 30 times larger than Exxon Valdez, but not mare damaging. It would be nice if you used factual sources rather than propaganda.

[Winehole23]

It would be nice if you used factual sources rather than propaganda.

Massey should hire you to do PR. You got some game yourself.

[Wild Cobra]

Massey should hire you to do PR. You got some game yourself.

I'm not saying they carry no fault, but . When someone flagrantly lies about a situation, should I believe the rest?

Isn't the truth damning enough?

[Winehole23]

I carry no brief for Dan, but the truth is damning enough for Massey regarding mine safety.

As for Propaganda Dan, you guys are two peas in a pod. You just propagandize in different directions.

[Wild Cobra]

I carry no brief for Dan, but the truth is damning enough for Massey regarding mine safety.

If people would just lay out the complete facts, then I wouldn't have anything to complain about. Would I?

[Winehole23]

You don't really care about completeness or truth. You just want everyone to agree with you.

[Wild Cobra]

You don't really care about completeness or truth. You just want everyone to agree with you.

I don't care so much if people agree with me. I do feel I'm right most the time, but disagreement is one thing. Disagreement because of believing lies or propaganda is another.

What I mean about the completeness of truth has to no with offering numbers and not explaining the numbers. X number of safety violations can range from in improperly marked container, water on a floor, etc. to something serious. Numbers are meaningless without a proper breakdown. I can only assume that is a proper breakdown was done, it wouldn't have the impact that including all violations does.

Haven't you noticed? I get bent out of shape mostly by people misrepresenting the facts, repeatedly. I do it myself at times by accident, but I at least try to maintain accuracy. I'm just not perfect. I don't expect others to be perfect, but someone like Dan is constantly just bringing up juicy looking headlines, regardless of the facts.

Dan...

Are you part of a girls gossip club?

[exstatic]

I don't care so much if people agree with me. I do feel I'm right most the time, but disagreement is one thing. Disagreement because of believing lies or propaganda is another.

What I mean about the completeness of truth has to no with offering numbers and not explaining the numbers. X number of safety violations can range from in improperly marked container, water on a floor, etc. to something serious. Numbers are meaningless without a proper breakdown. I can only assume that is a proper breakdown was done, it wouldn't have the impact that including all violations does.

Haven't you noticed? I get bent out of shape mostly by people misrepresenting the facts, repeatedly. I do it myself at times by accident, but I at least try to maintain accuracy. I'm just not perfect. I don't expect others to be perfect, but someone like Dan is constantly just bringing up juicy looking headlines, regardless of the facts.

Dan...

Are you part of a girls gossip club?

Yet, you provide no safety violation list breakdown, either, to prove YOUR assertion. You just assume that the company is being wronged. I think the dead miners speak otherwise.

[boutons_deux]

"assume that the company is being wronged"

WC's bias in favor of ins utions over citizens is a hallmark of his ivory-tower conservatism. The lower the status of the citizens (manual laborers like miners), the more pronounced the bias, just the the 5 radical activists SCOTUS.

[LnGrrrR]

If people would just lay out the complete facts, then I wouldn't have anything to complain about. Would I?

If you think that one lie/distortion outweights the rest of the facts in any article... well, then NO ONE is truthful.

[LnGrrrR]

"assume that the company is being wronged"

WC's bias in favor of ins utions over citizens is a hallmark of his ivory-tower conservatism. The lower the status of the citizens (manual laborers like miners), the more pronounced the bias, just the the 5 radical activists SCOTUS.

Gotta agree here. In most cases, WC sides with the ins ution over the individual. "Dead miners? Probably their fault."

[Wild Cobra]

Gotta agree here. In most cases, WC sides with the ins ution over the individual. "Dead miners? Probably their fault."

I'm not going to assume who's at fault, like the rest of you.

[boutons_deux]

Will the pitbull /Bachmann/teabaggers demonstrate and demagogue for miner safety, against WVA destruction, and for the environment?

Never.

[LnGrrrR]

I'm not going to assume who's at fault, like the rest of you.

Given the numerous faults listed against Massey earlier upthread, as well as pointing out that deaths are obviously an anomaly in the mining world, I think it's reasonable to assume there may be more fault on the part of the company.

See, WC, it's perfectly logical to assume something when you are given earlier facts, and make an inference in this case.

This is the logic you seem to be using: There is a room with 20 people. 19 end up murdered, and the one left admit to killing 18 of them. Yet he says he didn't kill the 19th. Your logic would seem to dictate that it's wrong to "assume" that he killed the 19th as well.

[Wild Cobra]

Given the numerous faults listed against Massey earlier upthread, as well as pointing out that deaths are obviously an anomaly in the mining world, I think it's reasonable to assume there may be more fault on the part of the company.

I understand that. But also understand that the severity of the "faults listed" isn't given. What if there are no safety issues past minor ones? Sudden gas buildups are one of the biggest explosion potentials. this happens too fast to detect and outrun.

Ever try to outrun a gas... or the wind?

See, WC, it's perfectly logical to assume something when you are given earlier facts, and make an inference in this case.

But what are the chances of the assumption being correct?

This is the logic you seem to be using: There is a room with 20 people. 19 end up murdered, and the one left admit to killing 18 of them. Yet he says he didn't kill the 19th. Your logic would seem to dictate that it's wrong to "assume" that he killed the 19th as well.

Not anywhere close.

[LnGrrrR]

But what are the chances of the assumption being correct?

Given the info WH23 posted earlier...

Massey's Aracoma mine continues to have numerous safety violations, with 316 cited in the last year.


The Upper Big Branch, where Monday's disaster occurred, was cited for 515 violations in 2009 and 124 so far this year, federal statistics show. The company was cited, among other things, for allowing combustible coal dust to ac ulate.

Labor Department records show that before Monday, three workers have been killed at the mine in the last 12 years. A worker was electrocuted in 2003, another died after a roof collapse in 2001, and a third died when a beam collapsed in 1998.

Asked about the firm's safety record, West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin III said Tuesday that the company was within federal safety tolerance requirements. But, he added, the firm's overall record "sure concerns me."

Between 2001 and 2005, the federal government proposed fines of $236,000 for violations at the Upper Big Branch mine, and Massey paid nearly $235,000.

Since Congress enacted tougher mine oversight regulations in 2006, the government has proposed $1.77 million in fines at the mine, but Massey has paid only about $365,000 and contested most of the difference, federal records show.

I'd say there's a better than average chance that some safety regulations weren't being followed.

You know, assumptions aren't necessarily a bad thing, you should try making some sometime.

And if you don't want to, let me tell you about this Nigerian guy I know, and a great way to make money...

[Wild Cobra]

Given the info WH23 posted earlier...

Massey's Aracoma mine continues to have numerous safety violations, with 316 cited in the last year.

A number meaningless, because they might all be minor infractions, including improperly filed paperwork.

The Upper Big Branch, where Monday's disaster occurred, was cited for 515 violations in 2009 and 124 so far this year, federal statistics show. The company was cited, among other things, for allowing combustible coal dust to ac ulate.

Was "combustible coal dust" part of the infractions, or were they cited for coal dust above the health standard, with some artistic editorialism?

50 gms/m3 is not a sustainable level. It falls out of the air too fast. Maybe the standard is far lower, but it then could not combust and be a realistic safety violation.

Labor Department records show that before Monday, three workers have been killed at the mine in the last 12 years. A worker was electrocuted in 2003

Was it the mines fault, or workers?

, another died after a roof collapse in 2001,

This can happen following the best of safety practices.

and a third died when a beam collapsed in 1998.

This is also often unavoidable.

Were any of these linked to a safety violation by the company?

Asked about the firm's safety record, West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin III said Tuesday that the company was within federal safety tolerance requirements. But, he added, the firm's overall record "sure concerns me."

Opinion.

Between 2001 and 2005, the federal government proposed fines of $236,000 for violations at the Upper Big Branch mine, and Massey paid nearly $235,000.

So?

Since Congress enacted tougher mine oversight regulations in 2006, the government has proposed $1.77 million in fines at the mine, but Massey has paid only about $365,000 and contested most of the difference, federal records show.

So?

I'd say there's a better than average chance that some safety regulations weren't being followed.

I agree, but were any of them serious enough to be the cause?

You know, assumptions aren't necessarily a bad thing, you should try making some sometime.

LOL... I do all the time, and you know it. I just do my best to remain open minded on things until more facts are learned. As it stands, there is absolutely nothing that shows the company has any liability in this accident.

[LnGrrrR]

I agree, but were any of them serious enough to be the cause?

I would say where's there's smoke, there's likely fire. Of course, it's not set in stone that it's the company's fault, but that's the point of the courts! This is a message board, so I don't hold myself to the same high standards.