That is not a very enviable safety record. |
That's extremely low and inappropriate. Most unsafe conditions in a mine would affect more than one person. |
That's very unusual and a red flag that there's some safety problems at that mine. |
The Bush administration ushered in this desire to develop cooperative ties between regulators and the mining industry. Safety has certainly suffered as a result. |
There are some good recommendations. It's a good start. |
There has to be enough of a fine to encourage compliance with the law. |
They see tomorrow, they don't see the future. They don't think they're getting their money's worth ... if a guy can't operate a continuous miner or a roof-bolting machine tomorrow. |
They want guys who are 30 to 35 years old, and there is a finite supply of them. |
To me, if you're under-capitalized and don't have the financial means to operate a safe mine, you shouldn't be in the mining business. |
We have a serious, serious problem in Kentucky with failure to report accidents. |
We're not getting everything that we think coal miners need in this bill. |
What we have now is terrible. Just a thin telephone wire with a speaker phone attached to it. |
When you allow a belt-line entry to be used as an intake air course, you are pumping a high velocity of air into where you are more likely … to have a mine fire. |
With the price of coal so high, you have operators coming out of the woodwork, trying to get into any seam of coal they can to make a quick buck, opening up a lot of little dog holes. |
You can mine 4 tons of coal in a couple of minutes. It's cheaper to exceed the dust limits, expose a miner to black lung and pay the fine than it is to do the right thing. |