Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 5, 1991 TAG: 9104050171
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The department's Mine Safety and Health Administration has issued 4,710 citations to operators of 847 mines, Martin said.
"I am appalled at the flagrant disregard for a law designed to protect coal miners against disabling lung disease," Martin said. "Altering test results could place lives in jeopardy."
Joe Main, director for health and safety for the United Mine Workers union, said the government's investigation shows that the companies cannot be trusted and that the Mine Safety and Health Administration should take over the dust-sampling program.
Coal companies are responsible for taking samples of the air in and around mines. They send those samples to the mine agency, which determines whether the companies are complying with federal dust regulations.
The civil penalties the government will assess for tampering with samples will total nearly $5 million - the largest combined fine in the history of the enforcement agency.
The citations resulted from a 20-month investigation that began after an agency employee noticed visible damage to sampling equipment. During the investigation, the agency checked roughly 120,000 dust samples from 2,000 mines.
Martin said the government intends to propose a civil penalty of $1,000 for each violation cited and plans to pursue criminal investigations.
Virginia has the third-largest number of violations, the Labor Department said.
Of the mines where tampering was thought to have occurred, 144 were in Virginia, 301 in Kentucky and 243 in West Virginia. Suspected tampering was found in more than one-fourth of Virginia's mines, compared with less than one-fifth nationwide.
Ninety-eight Virginia companies were cited, including the state's four largest coal producers: the Pittston Co.; Westmoreland Coal Co.; Island Creek Coal Co., a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum; and Consolidation Coal Co., a subsidiary of DuPont.
At Island Creek's Pocahontas No. 3 mine in Buchanan County, 57 samples showed evidence of tampering, the government said. That was by far the most incidences of tampering at a single mine in the state.
Carol Helderlein, a spokeswoman at Island Creek's Lexington, Ky., headquarters, said that before Thursday the company knew of only 10 cases in which its dust samples had been voided because of their abnormal appearance.
Island Creek has begun an internal investigation to determine the truth of the government's allegations, she said.
Mike Odom, president of the Pittston Coal Management Co. of Lebanon, said Thursday that his company's policy is to obey all state and federal health and safety laws. "We believe everything possible has been done to comply with the law and that there has been no misconduct by our company," Odom said.
A spokesman for Westmoreland, Steve Anderson, said his company had not seen the charges and had not decided on a response. All company employees are expected to abide by state and federal laws, he said.
Tom Hoffman, a spokesman for Consolidated Coal Co. in Pittsburgh, said his company rejected the government's allegations. If it is proven that any Consolidated employees tampered with samples, they will be severely disciplined, he said.
The government's contention of an industrywide conspiracy lacks credibility, Hoffman said. The coal industry has been trying for nearly a year to work with the government to examine dust-sampling procedures, he said.
Main said that over the past several years the UMW has seen its fears that coal companies would tamper with dust samples become reality. Coal miners had warned against the companies' policing themselves, he said.
Several companies have been cited previously for violating the monitoring requirements.
On Jan. 17, Peabody Coal pleaded guilty to charges that it falsified dust samples. Peabody, the nation's largest coal producer, agreed to pay a record $500,000 criminal fine.
The case prompted a federal grand jury investigation into whether other companies were submitting fraudulent dust samples.
The sampling instruments required by federal regulations are carried by miners or attached to underground equipment. The instruments contain filters that are removed and sent to government laboratories for analysis. A company is found in violation if the filters have collected more than 2 milligrams of dust for each cubic meter of air sampled.
The companies are believed either to have collected samples away from the dusty areas or to have blown the dust out of filters, which leaves a tell-tale white spot, before sending them off for analysis, Main said.
After the government began its investigation and began voiding samples, the number of samples with white centers dropped dramatically, the government said.
Martin said that the broad nature of the violations worried her. Some samples may have been within the allowable limit yet still were tampered with, she said. "It seems almost an addiction to cheat at some mines."
Every sample received by the government now is being inspected for signs of tampering, Martin said. Miners will be encouraged to report sampling violations through posters distributed throughout the coalfields, she said.
But UMW President Richard Trumka said the dust-sampling program is so structurally flawed that no amount of enforcement can correct it.
"If a coal operator is falsifying dust samples sent to MSHA for analysis, it follows that that coal operator knows or strongly suspects its dust-control program does not comply with the standards necessary to prevent coal miners from contracting the deadly black lung disease," Trumka said.
Trumka urged criminal investigations of possible sampling fraud in every coal mining state. Only U.S. attorneys in Charleston, W.Va., and Pittsburgh have started investigations so far, he said.
By tampering with the samples, coal companies have exposed miners to unknown levels of coal dust, Main said.
The Associated Press provided some information for this story.
by CNB