Five years out

Yesterday, April 5, marked the 5th anniversary of Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine disaster which killed 29 miners. On the bright side, it looks like the families of those who lost loved ones might be a little closer to some kind of justice. On the other hand, as mine safety expert Davitt McAteer argues here, congress has yet to act on mine safety and the Republican WV legislature actually rolled back some mine safety regulations in the last session.

West Virginia's late great Senator Robert C. Byrd nailed it:

"First, the disaster. Then the weeping. Then the outrage. And we are all too familiar with what comes next. After a few weeks, when the cameras are gone, when the ink on the editorials has dried, everything returns to business as usual. The health and the safety of America's coal miners, the men and women upon whom the Nation depends so much, is once again forgotten until the next disaster..."

Good news, bad news

When I was a kid, good news/bad news jokes were popular. One that I remember my old man telling involved a general telling his soldiers that the good news was that they got to finally change underwear today. The bad news was "You change with you, you change with you, you change with you..." and so on.

I guess the good news at the WV legislature is that Governor Tomblin has introduced mine safety legislation, at least partly in response to Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch disaster which killed 29 miners in April 2010.

The bad news is that a big part of the legislation has to do with drug testing coal miners, which, as mine safety expert Davitt McAteer testified today, had absolutely nothing to do with the disaster. Or the Sago disaster. Or the Aracoma mine fire. It appears that drug testing is the drug of choice this year under the dome.

To be fair, there are some good things in the governor's bill. There are probably some better things in a bill that has been introduced in the house. It would be nice if something would get through this time that would address the real issues. It's too soon to tell whether that will happen.

More on all that here from the one and only Ken Ward at the Charleston Gazette here.

Where deviation became the norm

The big news in West Virginia--and in much of the national media--is the release of a report on the causes of the Massey Energy Upper Big Branch mine disaster which killed 29 coal miners on April 5, 2010.

The report was prepared by the Governor's Independent Investigation Panel which was formed by then WV Governor Joe Manchin. It was submitted to current Governor Earl Ray Tomblin. Leading the team was J. Davitt McAteer, former head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration under President Clinton. Team members included Jim Beck, Celeste Montorton, Debbie Roberts, Katie Beall, Pat McGinley, Suzanne White and Beth Spence. Spence, who works for the American Friends Service Committee was the lead writer of the report. Governor Manchin previously asked McAteer and several members of this team to investigate the fatalities in Massey's Aracoma mine fire in 2006.

The release of the report yesterday has generated huge amounts of coverage, a selection of which follows. First up, here's one by America's best coal reporter, Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette.

Here's a sampling of national media coverage by the New York Times, NPR, CNN, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and MSNBC. There's way more where that come from.

According to the report, the disaster was man made and was due in part to a corporate "culture in which wrongdoing became acceptable, where deviation became the norm." More on this next week.

(Note: this post was prepared late Thursday and scheduled for publication early Friday morning. Here's hoping nothing awful happens between now and then.)