Three Years After the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster King Coal Still Rules

Three years ago today 29 coal miners died in an explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in southern West Virginia. Two other miners were seriously injured.

            In the three years since the disaster, King Coal still rules, and it is more of the same for the people and miners of West Virginia. Laws to reform mine safety were passed by the West Virginia legislature in 2012. The laws were considered to be weak by many safety experts, and even these weak standards have not been fully implemented. Though Barack Obama spoke at the miners’ memorial, his administration has done nothing to improve mine safety. Congress had the time for lengthy hearings over the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, but there have been no hearings for the lives of the 29 miners.

            The Mine Safety and Health Administration has implemented more than half of the 100 recommendations it received after the disaster and are on track to take action on the remaining recommendations. That might be some good news, but the sequestration is forcing the Labor Department to disband a legal team that had been assembled to improve mine safety. Health and safety regulations for anthracosis (black lung) have also become lax. Of the 31 victims of the Upper Big Branch disaster, autopsies and medical examinations showed that 22 of them had evidence of the disease.

            In his recent book, Combating Mountaintop Removal: New Directions in the Fight Against Big Coal, American University assistant professor of anthropology Bryan T. McNeil compares the economics and politics of West Virginia to that of a banana republic. Indeed, an independent investigation and report done through Wheeling Jesuit University on the Upper Big Branch mine disaster found that Massey Energy, the company that owned and ran the Upper Big Branch mine, used its influence to run West Virginia as a fiefdom, essentially using the state an extension of the coal company.

            Although a disaster on the scale of that of the Upper Big Branch has not occurred in the last three years, miners continue to die on the job. They also get black lung. And with so little change for mine safety, another Big Branch disaster could be around the corner.