Massey Energy Co. CEO Don Blankenship says the ongoing battle with federal and state officials over how the investigation and inspection of the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion on April 5, 2010 continues to hamper operations at Massey coal mines and has also created new safety and health concerns for coal mine.
“This industry for the last 20 years has not mined a single ton of coal without a continuous miner scrubber, which is a filter for the dust in the air,” he said. “For whatever reason, MSHA is requiring Massey, and some other companies, to turn these filters off.”
Blankenship says some of MSHA’s rules and regulations changes, like turning off scrubbers which filter dirt and air in some of its mines, and moving around equipment more than it should, are real dangers for coal miners.
“This has put coal miners' health and safety at risk,” he said. “Nobody is reporting on this issue, but instead focusing on who’s to blame for the April 5 explosion at UBB.”
MSHA officials, however, said there is no policy banning the use of scrubbers. "There is no MSHA policy banning the use of scrubbers, as evidenced by the fact that approximately 50 percent of Massey mining units are permitted to operate their dust scrubbers on continuous mining machines,” MSHA spokesperson Amy Louviere said in a statement to the media.
“The ventilation plans at some Massey operations where they were using continuous miners with scrubbers did not comply with basic dust control and other regulatory requirements. MSHA continues to monitor their compliance performance on a mine-by-mine basis,” she said.
Blankenship also called MSHA’s ventilation plans and regulations dangerous for coal miners. “Engineers at UBB were required to make ventilation changes they didn't agree with, and five days later the explosion happened,” Blankenship said.
He said the company would present evidence in a couple of weeks that would shed some light on what really happened and may have caused the explosion at UBB on April 5, 2010.
