It’s more important than ever to develop and train employees on emergency response procedures.

by Peter S. Gould

As I write, Congress contemplates H.R. 2768, the Supplementary Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act (S-MINER Act), an effort to build on the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act of 2006 (MINER Act), which became law on July 15, 2006. While the fate of the proposed S-MINER Act remains to be seen, the MINER Act is alive and well, and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) is testing its limits on a daily basis. Perhaps the most relevant MINER Act provision to Aggregates Manager’s readership is its 15-minute “accident” notification requirements, as it implemented and expanded by MSHA in its amended regulations.

The passage of 1969 Federal Coal Mine Safety and Health Act ushered in the first Congressionally mandated accident reporting requirement. MSHA’s “immediate notification” regulatory requirement for a dozen defined “accidents” evolved from the Coal Act and now applies to all mines. MSHA amended Section 50.10 in an emergency temporary standard (ETS) in the months preceding the MINER Act’s passage, and in doing so, formalized a new 15-minute mandate that was later adopted by Congress in the MINER Act. Congress’s incorporation of that regulatory mandate into a statutory one was accompanied by a minimum $5,000, and maximum $60,000, penalty for failure to timely report to MSHA (within 15 minutes) those accidents “which result in the death of an individual at the mine, or an injury or entrapment of an individual at the mine which has a reasonable potential to cause death.”

MSHA concluded its emergency rulemaking concerning several MINER Act provisions by issuing a final rule, which applied the 15-minute reporting mandate to all defined Part 50 “accidents” that previously required “immediate” reporting. It revised its definition of “accident” to include both an entrapment, which has a reasonable potential to cause death, and an unplanned underground fire that is not extinguished within 10 minutes. MSHA also implemented a 24-hour call system for the reporting accidents that occur any time of the day or week; Section 50.10 now states that the “operator shall immediately contact MSHA, at once without delay and within 15 minutes at the toll-free number, 800-746-1553, once the operator knows or should know that an accident has occurred.” The following is MSHA’s revised list of “accidents,” which requires reporting within 15 minutes and appears at 30 C.F.R. Section 50.2(h):

1. A death of an individual at a mine;

2. An injury to an individual at a mine which has a reasonable potential to cause death;

3. An entrapment of an individual for more than 30 minutes or which has a reasonable potential to cause death;

4. An unplanned inundation of a mine by a liquid or gas;

5. An unplanned ignition or explosion of gas or dust;

6. In underground mines, an unplanned fire not extinguished within 10 minutes of discovery; in surface mines and surface areas of underground mines, an unplanned fire not extinguished within 30 minutes of discovery;

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