Federal law will require more mine rescue teams

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Operators of the nation's coal mines will spend up to $128 million to comply with the new federal mine safety legislation, with nearly half going to equip and train 260 new rescue teams, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Meanwhile state regulators could be forced to hire experts to oversee training and certification of perhaps 2,000 or more miners who could be named to serve on the teams.

An hour's distance

The law, which President Bush is expected to sign, requires rescue teams to be located within an hour's distance of the nation's underground coal mines, rather than the two hour's distance required now.

For coal producing states with large numbers of underground mines, such as West Virginia, the changes would be huge. Currently, the nation's second largest coal producer has 27 mine rescue squads, but the state's mine safety chief says the legislation might require as many as 65 more.

"That's a big deal," said Jim Dean, acting director of the Office of Miners' Health Safety & Training. Like other coal states, West Virginia provides training and certification for mine rescue teams, among other things.

Dean said the state would need more money to hire additional safety instructors and buy new equipment to monitor the industry's teams and safety systems. The state already is contemplating spending another $1.2 million a year to pay for two state-run mine rescue teams made up of the agency's employees.

Just what the legislation means for other Appalachian states, where the bulk of the nation's underground coal mines are located, is less certain.

Kentucky already tries to position its teams no more than an hour from any of the state's 239 underground mines, said Chuck Wolfe, a spokesman for the state's Office of Mine Safety and Licensing. All of Kentucky's teams are comprised of state mine inspectors.

Mine operators will spend anywhere between $185,000 to $250,000 to set up each of the 260 rescue teams the Budget Office says are needed to comply with the law, said Bruce Watzman, a lobbyist for the National Mining Association.

Maintenance, equipment and installing communications and tracking systems would add tens of millions more.

'Real money'

"It's going to be real money," he said. "The legislation is a big challenge, I think, in its entirety."

The coal industry has not complained publicly about the added cost because of sensitivity over the recent rise in deaths.

The mine legislation, along with similar laws passed by West Virginia, came in response to a series of deadly coal mining accidents in West Virginia, Kentucky and other states. So far this year, 33 U.S. miners have been killed, compared with 22 in all of last year, according to the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration. This year is on pace to be the deadliest year since 47 miners were killed in 1995.

Besides rescue teams, the budget office says coal companies will spend approximately $21 million for 35,000 additional emergency air packs and unknown amounts for other new safety gear such as communications equipment.

United Mine Workers of America spokesman Phil Smith said mine operators should have been spending the money on hundreds more teams all along.

"That's a comment about how far down this mine rescue system has gone," Smith said. "It used to be that there was a mine rescue team at every mine."

To Smith, complaints about the cost of creating more teams are immaterial. "The question shouldn't be how much is this going to cost, but how many lives is this going to save," he said.

Watzman said coal companies may have problems recruiting miners to join the all-volunteer rescue teams, which require significant time commitments for training and mandatory contests. "That may be a challenge," he said.

But Smith said finding rescue team members won't be a problem.

"Certainly miners in every mine want to know that there will be people there ready to come in and rescue them," he said. "Interest in mine rescue is pretty strong right now."