Prison Sentence for Coal Mine Owner Underscores Need for Transparency with Safety Investigators
On Friday, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia sentenced a coal mine owner to three months in prison and ordered him to pay a $3,000 fine for lying to an MSHA agent during a June 2009 investigation. The court also fined the coal company $25,000 and placed it on probation for a year. In June 2009, MSHA inspectors determined that someone at the mine illegally wired the electrical connections to a belt feeder without any ground fault protection, which created a serious safety risk. The coal mine owner allegedly lied to an MSHA agent about who performed the wiring and thus interfered with the MSHA investigation. In discussing the sentence, the United States Attorney commented, “The safety of coal miners is of the utmost importance. Interfering with an MSHA investigation is a serious matter. We will continue to aggressively pursue those whose actions create unnecessary dangers to the lives of coal miners.”
