Coal Mines: Fines, Violations, Injuries and PROFITS

A joint investigation by NPR and Mine Safety and Health News found that thousands of mine operators fail to pay safety penalties, even as they continue to manage dangerous — and sometimes deadly — mining operations. Most unpaid penalties are between two and 10 years overdue; some go back two decades. And federal regulators seem unable or unwilling to make mine owners pay.
Our joint investigation looked at 20 years of federal mine data through the first quarter of 2014, including details about fines, payments, violations and injuries. We used raw Department of Labor data and delinquency records provided by the Mine Safety and Health Administration to calculate the number of injuries and injury rates, and violations and gravity of violations, at mines with delinquent penalties while they were delinquent.

Among the findings:

• 2,700 mining company owners failed to pay nearly $70 million in delinquent penalties.

• The top nine delinquents owe more than $1 million each.

• Mines that don't pay their penalties are more dangerous than mines that do, with injury rates 50 percent higher.

• Delinquent mines reported close to 4,000 injuries in the years they failed to pay, including accidents that killed 25 workers and left 58 others with permanent disabilities.

• Delinquent mines continued to violate the law, with more than 130,000 violations, while they failed to pay mine safety fines.

Most mine operators pay their penalties, our investigation found. Delinquents account for just 7 percent of the nation's coal, metals and mineral mining companies. But that small subset of the industry is more dangerous than the rest, federal data show.
The violations at delinquent mines included 40,000 that are labeled in government safety records as "Significant and Substantial," which means serious injury or illness were likely if inspectors hadn't intervened. More than 15,000 violations were the kind found in fatal accidents, major disasters or mining deaths, the records also show.
And when those safety records are compared with other government data on coal production, it shows that some of the top delinquents continued to mine coal and reap millions of dollars in revenue while their safety fines remained unpaid.

from here