Nine miners died in August in Utah’s Crandall Canyon mine because Murray Energy Corp. cut coal it was not supposed to — ignoring numerous warnings that its work was making the mine unstable — and was allowed to do so by a bullied federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.
Having reached that conclusion in a scathing report released this week, a Senate committee headed by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said “the secretary of labor should refer the case to the Department of Justice for prosecution.”
The 75-page Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee report also cited internal Murray Energy documents to support its contention that mine co-owner Robert Murray was fully aware of dangerous structural problems resulting from the company’s aggressive mining plan, despite his public assertions to the contrary.
On one company document talking about ground movements knocking coal out of pillars in March, Murray wrote “noted.”
Murray’s lead attorney, Michael McKown, responded strongly to the report. “We are shocked and outraged,” he said, by the “serious and biased allegations (in a) superficial” committee report that is “politically motivated, irresponsible and unjustifiable.”
Ranking Republicans on the Senate committee, including Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, came to Murray’s defense. Hatch and Sens. Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Johnny Isakson of Georgia said MSHA should be allowed to complete its official disaster investigation before Congress rushes to judgment on “incomplete and unofficial evidence.
But to Ed Havas, a Salt Lake City attorney helping to represent the heirs of seven of the nine victims and two other miners injured in the ill-fated rescue effort, the Kennedy report was “straightforward … seems to be well documented and thoroughly researched.”
While he wants to review it in greater detail, Havas added “this simply confirms what we’ve always believed. The mining being done was dangerous, how it was being done was inappropriate and it should never have happened.”
Murray Energy was going after coal that Crandall Canyon’s previous owner had left behind because it was needed to hold up the mountain above the mine. Citing documents from Murray Energy and its mining consultant, Agapito Associates Inc., the report added that when the company decided to go after that coal, engineering work validating the effort was based on faulty data that MSHA did not analyze thoroughly.
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