Industry vs. the Regulators: Guess Who Wins

* By Fred Grimm Miami Herald *

On April 5, an explosion ripped through the Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, W.Va., killing 29 coal miners.

Survivors told a congressional panel last week that Massey Energy had flouted safety regulations and rendered the poorly ventilated coal mine into “a ticking time bomb.” Upper Big Branch became a deadly monument to ineffectual enforcement by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. Massey Energy was essentially allowed to regulate itself.

On April 20, the Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and setting off a monstrous environmental disaster with an oil spill that may yet make its way to the Florida coast. And if the federal coal mining regulators were ineffectual, the Minerals Management Service that oversees offshore drilling was utterly co-opted by the oil industry.

Evading Enforcers

At Upper Big Branch, coal miner Gary Quarles told the House Education and Labor Committee last week, mine foremen were tipped off when inspectors approached Big Branch — “Got a man on the property.” And workers would hustle around trying to disguise violations.

Oil rig inspectors didn’t even bother with the facade of an inspection. The Office of the Inspector General found that the MMS inspectors responsible for Gulf of Mexico drilling allowed oil company officials to fill out their own inspection reports — in pencil. The New York Times, which managed to obtain an advance copy of a damning audit report of the MMS, reported that lackey inspectors would then “write on top of the pencil in ink and turn in the completed form.”