Vol. 72/No. 2      January 14, 2008

A truck driver was killed December 12 at the Bear Canyon No. 4 mine near Huntington, Utah. The unidentified victim was a driver for Trimac Trucking Co. The Bear Canyon mine is operated by C.W. Mining Co.

The trucker’s vehicle had got stuck in the snow. A loader at the mine was preparing to pull it out when the driver was crushed between the loader and the truck, a spokesperson for the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) told the Salt Lake Tribune.

Four months earlier, nine people were killed in the disaster at the Crandall Canyon mine, near Huntington.

On December 14, David Neal, 57, of Dixie, West Virginia, died at a Charleston hospital from injuries received in a fall 10 days earlier at the Mammoth 130 mine. The underground operation, located near the community of Mammoth in Kanawha County, is run by a Massey Energy subsidiary.

Neal and another worker were on the surface changing rollers on a suspended, overland conveyor belt. The belt started moving unexpectedly and Neal fell nearly 40 feet to the ground, a state mine safety official told the media.

Neal was the eighth West Virginia coal miner killed on the job in 2007.  
 
Crandall Canyon mine
In a separate development, a Utah state agency rejected efforts by attorneys for coal boss Robert Murray to block the release of records relating to the August collapse at the Crandall Canyon mine.

The general manager of the Utah state government’s Intermountain Power Agency (IPA), James Hewlett, wrote, “IPA believes that the public’s interest in obtaining information about the Crandall Canyon mine outweighs petitioners’ interest in protecting information that has little, if any, commercial value given that the Crandall Canyon mine is currently closed.”

The Salt Lake Tribune had requested a copy of the records from IPA. The agency is a co-owner of the Crandall Canyon mine with Andalex Resources, a Murray-owned subsidiary. IPA operates several coal-fired power plants, buying coal from Utah mines and selling the electricity to California and Utah utilities.

The Tribune asked for documents relating to safety, engineering, and accidents at the mine. The request included information about “bounces”—incidents in which pressure from above causes coal to explode from pillars holding up the mine roof. The Crandall Canyon mine lies deep under a mountain.

Murray’s lawyers opposed releasing the records arguing that there was no “public interest” in how Crandall Canyon was operated and that the disclosure could harm the company and give competitors an unfair advantage.

“This theory has a fatal flaw,” Hewlett wrote. “The Crandall Canyon Mine has no customers and, therefore, no competitors. It is difficult to understand how current or former customers could use any of the disputed information to negotiate a better contract when the mine cannot fulfill any contracts.”

Andalex Resources was given 30 days to appeal before any records could be released.

Murray-owned companies have sued to block the release of other documents relating to the Crandall Canyon collapse as well.  
 
 
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