With 2011 just days away, the mining industry is about to close the book on the deadliest year in nearly two decades.
Forty-eight U.S. miners perished in 2010, the most since since 1992, when 55 were killed. The toll represents a jump of more than 150 percent from 2009, when 18 miners died on the job.
The spike in fatalities stemmed mainly from the Upper Big Branch disaster in April, which took the lives of 29 workers at a Massey Energy Co. coal mine in West Virginia. That tragedy and six other deaths made 2010 the deadliest year for West Virginia’s mining industry since 1974.
Nonetheless, a proposed overhaul of mine safety regulation failed in Congress. The bill to give the Mine Safety and Health Administration greater power to prosecute mining executives and to shut down mines in violation of safety laws was defeated in the House of Representatives on Dec. 8, and never came to a vote in the Senate.
Such legislation now faces a much harder path to approval because Republicans, who will have a majority in the House, are typically staunch opponents of tougher regulation.
The mine safety agency did step up inspections after the Upper Big Branch disaster. In September, for example, MSHA announced that inspections of 111 metal and coal mines–including 10 owned by Massey–turned up 2,660 violations and triggered nearly 200 withdrawal orders to close off portions of mines until hazards were addressed.
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