"There are many challenges to complying with the new law," James Pablic, safety director of Amfire Mining Co. of Latrobe, said Wednesday at a Miners Town Hall meeting that focused on escaping and surviving an emergency.
For Consol Energy Inc., the nation's largest underground mining company, the cost of complying is between $35 million and $45 million for 2006 through 2009, according to a securities filing.
A panel of 10 mine safety experts at the meeting at the Four Points Sheraton near Greensburg emphasized the importance of emergency training and implementing an emergency response plan to increase the likelihood of surviving a mine disaster.
The industry has been adjusting to the regulations in the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act of 2006, known as the MINER Act. It was passed in the wake of the deaths of 12 miners trapped inside the Sago Mine in West Virginina and five who died in an explosion in the Darby No. 1 mine in Kentucky.
The measure requires safety shelters in mines that provide for 96 hours of oxygen, additional breathing apparatus stored underground and two trained mine rescue teams within an hour of a coal mine. Wireless communications with miners are to be instituted by June 2009.
The Mine Safety and Health Administration had estimated that the new emergency evacuation and the requirements for additional breathing apparatus might cost coal companies about $19 million.
To meet the safety requirements, Amfire has bought nine shelters at $90,000 each for the five mines it operates, three of which are in Indiana County. Plus, it has bought thousands of additional self-contained self-rescuers, Pablic said.
Instead of training miners just once a year on using the breathing apparatus, they now must be trained quarterly, Pablic said. "I think it (new safety regulations) make it safer for a lot of people," he said.
At Consol, the costs of fulfilling the safety requirements include the insertion of safety shelters in the mines, as well as the addition of the self-contained self-rescuers, spokesman Thomas Hoffman said.
The requirement that the underground mines have caches of extra 60-minute breathing appratus within a 30-minute walk of miners will mean more costs for Consol, which has 8,000 employees operating 17 mines in six states, Hoffman said. Upper St. Clair-based Consol produces about 70 million tons of coal a year.
Tracking miners in the case of an emergency should improve with the insertion of two phone lines in a mine, as well as safe lines to help miners walk out of the mine. The technology for wireless communications underground is not yet developed, said David Chirdon, the Mine Safety and Health Administration's electrical safety division chief.
One former United Mine Workers safety official believes the new law has improved mine safety, but does not go far enough.
"We need to get into the 21st century in mine safety," said Joseph Main, retired safety and health director for the UMW.
Main, who served as a UMW safety official for 22 years, said procedures should be in place, possibly by using pipes, to test the quality of the underground air, to determine when and where it is safe to send a rescue team. As good a safe haven as the shelters can be, the miners' first thought in case of an emergency should be "to get out," said Main, a former miner.
"The technology prior to the Sago Mine and the Aracoma Mine (West Virginia) accidents was basically 1960s technology. It was very antiquated," Chirdon said. A mine fire in the Aracoma Alma Mine in January 2006 killed two miners, about two weeks after the Sago Mine accident.
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