If you’ve been following the news, you’ve no doubt seen recent reports about the frustrating, and so far unsuccessful, search for six trapped miners at the Crandall Canyon Mine in Huntington, Utah. Rescue teams have been drilling where they hope the miners might be, but it’s largely been guesswork.
It’s not a political issue, per se, but the NYT ran an editorial today about Republican policies failed to take important steps on mine safety.
For too long, the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress allowed mine operators to put off making needed investments to ensure their workers’ safety. And last year when a string of coal-mining disasters — that killed 48 miners — forced Congress to enact new safety legislation, it still gave companies far too much time to install communications systems that might have helped find the Utah miners.
There is technology available today that combines cable and wireless systems to link miners far below the surface and teams above. This technology does not guarantee perfect communications in the case of a cave-in or other accident, but it is certainly much better than nothing.
Rather than requiring that such systems be installed immediately, the mining legislation passed last year gave mine operators — many of whom resisted all new safety standards — until 2009 to develop and install more sophisticated two-way wireless communications systems that could resist cave-ins and penetrate through the layers of rock and coal.
Dems have proposed forcing mine operators to adopt, quickly, emergency communications systems that could track and communicate with workers in the event of an accident. Congressional Republicans and the Bush administration have opposed the Democrats’ efforts. It’s another example of what Rick Perlstein has labeled “E. coli conservatism.”
Indeed, the Huffington Post’s Max Follmer offered some background yesterday on the man Bush tapped to serve as the nation’s mine safety czar, which tells us quite a bit about the administration’s philosophy on the issue.
The man who will oversee the federal government’s investigation into the disaster that has trapped six workers in a Utah coal mine for over a week was twice rejected for his current job by senators concerned about his own safety record when he managed mines in the private sector. […]
The wife and daughter of a miner killed at Sago wrote a letter to lawmakers that same month urging them to reject Stickler’s nomination.
“Mr. Stickler is a longtime coal executive and because of his connections with the coal industry, we are concerned that his primary objectives may be solely on compliance and production, not on miners’ health and safety,” Debbie Hamner and Sara Bailey wrote in a letter quoted by the Gazette.
Indeed, senators from both parties raised serious questions not only about Stickler’s safety record at his own mines, but about the wisdom of putting an industry insider in charge of overseeing mine safety inspectors.
United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts said that miners “could not tolerate” another industry executive overseeing their health and safety.
“Too often these mining executives place priority on productivity, but fail to focus on miners’ health and safety,” Roberts told Mike Hall at the AFL-CIO’s blog in June 2006.
When the Senate balked, the president installed Stickler anyway, using a recess appointment.
Only 522 days to go.