David Zatezalo Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Mine Safety Agency Should Do More To Protect Coal Miners In The Pandemic, Oversight Office Finds

The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration has not done enough to protect coal miners during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report from an oversight agency released Tuesday.

Through interviews with MSHA officials and union representatives, as well as reviews of state and national policies, the Department of Labor’s Office of the Inspector General concluded that MSHA could do more to track coronavirus cases among coal miners, address a growing backlog of inspections, and mandate safety precautions underground.

Following the March determination that coal mines would be considered “critical infrastructure” and exempt from coronavirus-related shutdowns, MSHA issued voluntary guidelines to protect miners during the pandemic, including measures such as frequent hand-washing, wearing masks and maintaining social distance when possible. But the agency has faced significant pressure to make those guidelines mandatory.

“We’ve been trying to get the Mine Safety and Health Administration to establish regulations, emergency temporary standards, to set up a regulation that everybody has to follow, that is enforceable, instead of us going from mine to mine to mine and trying to work something out,” said United Mine Workers of America spokesperson Phil Smith. “Because at the mines where there is no union, there is no protection. It’s that simple.”

The National Coalition of Black Lung and Respiratory Disease Clinics wrote to MSHA requesting an emergency temporary standard, and a bipartisan group of senators in May filed the COVID-19 Mine Worker Protection Act to require the issuance of such a measure.

MSHA has not yet committed to issuing an emergency temporary standard, the inspector general said.

The inspector general’s report also found that because of the coronavirus, MSHA suspended five categories of enforcement actions and seriously reduced 13 more, including ventilation investigations, non-fatal accident investigations and compliance assistance visits. Regular safety and health inspections, plus 14 other enforcement categories, have continued to operate at full capacity.

The report said those suspensions and reductions were a tradeoff: They limited contact between miners and mine safety inspectors and protected MSHA’s workforce from potential exposure to COVID-19, but they resulted in a backlog and increased the safety risk for miners.

Adding to the backlog was the number of MSHA inspectors who self-identified as being at high risk of contracting the coronavirus. About 100 of MSHA’s 750 inspectors, or 13 percent, have removed themselves from regular inspection duties out of concern for their own health.

In a response to the inspector general’s report included in its appendices, MSHA head David Zatezelo said, “MSHA agrees with OIG recommendations to develop a plan to manage the potential backlog of suspended or reduced activities, once full operations resume, and to monitor COVID-19 outbreaks at mines and to use that information to reevaluate our decision not to issue an emergency temporary standard.”

Some potential coronavirus prevention measures for coal mines include PPE, sanitization and staggered shifts. But these measures are an added expense for mine operators already struggling to remain profitable as the industry contracts.

As Congressional Panel Focuses On Black Lung, UMW Urges Stronger Health Protections

As Congress hears testimony on the epidemic of black lung disease among Appalachian miners, two labor leaders are calling on Congress and regulators to do more to protect miners.

In a letter to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA, the United Mine Workers of America and the United Steel Workers of America urged stricter standards on silica dust. A growing body of research indicates silica dust exposure contributes to the sharp rise in cases of black lung disease, which now afflicts as many as one in five experienced central Appalachian coal miners.

A 2018 investigation from NPR, PBS Frontline and the ReSource found that far more miners had the most severe form of black lung disease, progressive massive fibrosis, than had been recognized in government reports, and that those cases were concentrated in central Appalachia. Silica dust can be 20 times as harmful as coal dust alone, and the quartz-rich rock that produces it is common in central Appalachian mines. But federal regulators have resisted regulating silica dust exposure.

In Wednesday’s letter, UMW president Cecil Roberts and USW president Leo Gerard asked regulators to lower respirable silica standards and require more frequent monitoring inside coal mines. “We anxiously await MSHA’s plan to address one of the worst occupational health crises of our time,” the union presidents wrote.

Roberts and MSHA administrator David Zatezalo are both scheduled to testify Thursday morning before the workforce protections subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Congressional Oversight

Committee chairman Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) pledged to hold hearings on the resurgence of the disease shortly after the release of the NPR investigation. “I will be calling hearings in the 116th Congress to forge legislative solutions so that we can prevent the physical, emotional, and financial toll of this completely preventable disease,” Scott said.

MSHA chief Zatezelo will likely face tough questions at the hearing over his agency’s reluctance to regulate silica exposure.

In what was hailed as a long-overdue change, MSHA in 2014 implemented a rule further limiting coal dust exposure, but that rule did not specifically target silica. Under the rule, when a mine exceeds coal dust or silica limits, it is placed on a reduced standard for coal dust, but not silica. Regulators say silica is difficult and expensive to monitor, so coal dust is used as a proxy for silica exposure. But the 2018 NPR investigation found thousands of instances where lowering coal dust standards overall did not bring silica dust to a safe level.

MSHA head Zatezelo has agreed that silica is a problem, but speaking to the ReSource at a West Virginia black lung conference in early June, he declined to answer repeated questions on whether or not he believes silica dust is contributing to the surge in disease.

MSHA has put out a request for information to study whether or not the 2014 coal dust rule will make a difference in miners’ health. Because it can take 10-15 years for black lung to develop, any study of the 2014 rule will likely not be completed for decades.

Speaking at the same West Virginia conference, UMW president Cecil Roberts told an enthusiastic crowd, “Anyone who tells you, ‘We need more information.’ They’re lying.”

Robert Cohen directs the Mining Education and Research Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In an interview, Cohen said he’ll use his testimony to encourage Congress to force MSHA to adopt the silica exposure standards recently implemented by another worker safety agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. That standard applies to construction workers and others exposed to silica, but not to miners.

“Those regulations are stricter, they call for a lower level of silica dust to be the permissible limit, and I think that’s something we should really strongly consider,” Cohen said.

Cohen called on Congress to step in and regulate silica if MSHA would not. Such a proposal will likely be on the table at this week’s hearing.

Trust Fund Concerns

Also discussed in the hearing will be the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, which helps pay medical costs for many miners disabled by the disease.

After initially promising to support the fund, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky allowed the tax on coal companies that supported the trust fund to lapse to a lower level at the end of last year.

As the black lung epidemic worsens, more miners and their families will likely rely on the trust fund, a federal program that provides benefits to about 25,600 miners and their dependents.

The Government Accountability Office has found that if funding for the trust fund is not restored to its pre-2019 level or higher, it may not have enough money to make its payments to disabled miners by 2020 and will have to begin using taxpayer money.

Mine Safety Nomination Follows History as Coal Executive

The retired coal company executive from West Virginia chosen by Republican President Trump to oversee U.S. mining safety says his first priority is preventing people from getting hurt and that he replaced the managers of a mine plagued by safety violations in 2010 and 2011 where a miner died.

David Zatezalo of Wheeling, who retired in 2014 as chairman of Rhino Resources, still faces opposition from his home state’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, who says he’s unconvinced the 62-year-old is suited to the job based on his industry safety record, especially as mining deaths have already increased this year with 13 deaths.

Zatezalo had told the Senate committee that advanced his nomination this week, on a 12-11 party-line vote, that the U.S. industry is safer than ever, technology can further improve it and the required four annual mine inspections shouldn’t be reduced.

“Our first priority is preventing people from getting hurt and improving the compliance regime across the board,” he said at his confirmation hearing. His nomination goes next to a floor vote, which hasn’t been scheduled yet. A similar partisan split would confirm him.

Zatezalo told the senators he wouldn’t reopen the investigation sought by ex-Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship in the 2010 West Virginia mine explosion that killed 29 miners unless there is new evidence. Blankenship spent a year in federal prison for misdemeanor conspiracy to violate federal safety standards at the mine.

Questioned about the repeated safety violations cited by MSHA and the 2011 death at one of Rhino’s West Virginia mines, Zatezalo said the management of that site wasn’t doing what it should have. “I felt you know if you haven’t done your job we should be big kids and deal with it as such. Incidentally I replaced that management because I wasn’t too happy with their performance and I hadn’t been for some time,” he said.

At 6,000-pound (2,700-kilogram) piece of an underground rib pillar fell on 33-year-old crew chief Joseph Cassell, crushing him at the Rhino’s Eagle #1 Mine in Raleigh County, MSHA investigators reported. They concluded the pillar was inadequately bolted.

“The operator’s attempts to support the ribs with timbers and/or 42-inch conventional bolts were inadequate, as evidenced by loose, broken and hanging ribs, and broken supports at numerous locations,” the investigators wrote.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, said Zatezalo was “uniquely qualified” for the safety job. The Tennessee Republican noted that the engineer and businessman’s 41-year mining career began as a laborer.

But before the committee vote, ranking Democratic Sen. Patty Murray said Zatezalo had failed to commit to stand up for workers against the pro-business Trump administration that has rolled back various worker protections.

At the confirmation hearing, she cited his company’s safety violations and noted that he had been sued for allowing “unchecked” workplace discrimination and then punishing the employee who was the target. “That’s really troubling to me and I fear another example of a fox to guard the hen house,” she said.

Even before that, Manchin said West Virginians are “painfully familiar” with the human toll from mine accidents. He said Zatezalo wouldn’t provide the strong leadership needed at MSHA.

Celeste Monforton, a former MSHA official who watched the hearing, said Zatezalo’s answers were measured. She said she was taking a wait-and-see approach to the selection, adding she was glad Trump hadn’t chosen a lobbyist.

“It ultimately comes down to if he is confirmed, how we see his behavior and his attitude after he’s confirmed there at the agency,” she said.

In his testimony, Zatezalo said he would support Trump’s agenda for the health and safety of American miners. In his career, he said he managed and operated 39 different mines. The U.S. industry, he said, is safer and healthier than ever before, but progress is needed, including technology for real-time monitoring of silica dust blamed for a virulent variation of the black lung disease that has afflicted even some younger coal miners.

Zatezalo said the number of federal inspectors is “pretty good today,” and that the data show them making the four annual mine inspections required by law.

“We certainly don’t want to let that fall down, just as I wouldn’t want to drive on the highways without police … to take control of speeders and drunk drivers. Inspections in mines in the United States are a necessity, and they have to continue,” he said.