Mine Office Closures Conflict With Goal to Produce More Coal (1)

The last time there was only one federal mine safety district office in southern West Virginia, 29 miners lost their lives.

The Upper Big Branch Mine explosion—the worst coal mining accident in 55 years—devastated communities, put people in prison, and highlighted oversight deficiencies in the coal-dense Appalachia region.

As part of a sweeping overhaul of mine safety enforcement, the US Mine Safety and Health Administration split the district where the 2010 explosion occurred into two, creating a new office in Pineville to ensure adequate inspections of high-risk mines in the southern part of the second-largest coal-producing state.

Now, 15 years later, as President Donald Trump exercises his executive power to push for increased mine production, one of his administration’s first cost-cutting initiatives is to target the Pineville office and several others for closing.

“Everybody knows this is a bad idea,” said Carey Clarkson, the vice president of the National Council of Field Labor Locals. “It’s not going to save money, it’s going to cost lives.”

The saga surrounding MSHA office closures began after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency’s wall of receipts touted the termination of more than 30 office leases for the agency. As Musk left Washington, so did many of those planned closures, with the list trimmed to four. But two of those four—Pineville, W.Va. and Mt. Pleasant, Pa.—are district offices, which provide broad oversight and serve as the primary resource for field offices to execute inspections and investigations of mine operations.

“These offices were located within close proximity to our other offices, which had plenty of space available to accommodate additional staff,” a Department of Labor spokesperson said in a statement to Bloomberg Law.

MSHA plans to split Mt. Pleasant’s inspection workload of nearly 290 mineral and coal mines between offices in Warrendale, Pa., and Morgantown, W.Va., with the latter inheriting most of them, according to three people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified for fear of losing their jobs.

The Beckley district would see a more than 80% increase in oversight responsibility if MSHA moves forward with plans to recombine it with Pineville, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis of the agency’s own data.

The mine safety agency declined to say how much the government would save by closing these offices, referring questions to the General Services Administration, which didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

These planned closures come as Trump has pushed to expand both the mining and use of coal inside the US, rolling back pollution rules for power plants and promising legal strikes against state regulations. More mining would mean more work for MSHA, an agency that’s struggled for years to meet its obligation to inspect US mines.

How the administration has gone about communicating these office closures indicates leaders don’t have a clear plan, said Joseph Main, who was assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health when the Upper Big Branch disaster occurred. These planned closures come as MSHA is without a confirmed leader: Trump’s pick to lead the agency, Wayne Palmer, is still awaiting a Senate vote.

“They’ve laid out a road map that is going to cost miners their lives,” Main told Bloomberg Law when the administration first announced plans for MSHA office closures.

Kelley Moore, a spokeswoman for Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va), said the senator is concerned about the office closings and has raised the issue directly with Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer.

Super Districts

The proposed closures would leave the safety agency with only two district offices in West Virginia to oversee employers across nearly a dozen states, including the various counties of the coal-rich state. The plan would also move district office personnel further from the field offices and mine operations subject to their jurisdiction.

For example, if Mt. Pleasant closes down, it would take personnel in the Frackville, Pa., field office over four hours to reach the Morgantown district office in case of an emergency such as a fire, explosion, gas leak, or ground collapse, possibly delaying a coordinated response.

“That kind of event is definitely what we’re all striving to avoid,” said American Federation of Government Employees Local 3431 President Kevin Hunt, whose local union office oversees the workers in two MSHA buildings slated for closure—Prestonsburg and Beaver Dam, both in Kentucky.

MSHA disputes these claims, asserting there will be no change in the number of staff or workload as a result of these office closures. “These changes have no impact on the day-to-day operations and will not impede MSHA’s ability to respond to a mine emergency,” said a DOL spokesperson.

Physical offices are important to mine safety inspection operations. Field offices provide a home base for inspectors to gather and calibrate the special equipment needed to carry out their duties, such as conducting health sampling of respirable dust and noise exposure at mines. There are at least 80 field offices under the 15 district offices.

The work of safety inspectors also varies somewhat by location, because mines have different geological makeups. That makes moving personnel around to compensate for shifts in enforcement a complex process. Inspectors are also difficult to replace if they leave: it takes three to five years to fully train them due to the specialized skills needed.

MSHA both closed and created additional field offices in previous administrations. For example, Main closed an office in eastern Kentucky, combining the office’s enforcement responsibilities with others, as a result of a decline in coal production in the Appalachian region.

The major overhaul will have an impact on the number and quality of inspections taking place if these plans go forward, he added.

Statutory Obligations

MSHA by law is required to inspect each underground mine at least four times a year and surface mines twice a year. But that often hasn’t happened, long before Trump took office.

A watchdog report from late last year found that MSHA left 176 mines without inspection for two years, and in some cases, four years. The Office of Inspector General found the agency also didn’t meet requirements for writing violations and improving the frequency of sampling for silica, a harmful dust that can cause lung disease.

It’s important that MSHA maintains the safety capacity that miners have fought to have, according to Hunt, who also has nearly two decades of experience as a safety inspector himself.

Many of the issues the agency faces stem from years of budget cuts and staffing shortages. MSHA lost almost 40% of its inspectors from 2011 to 2021.

A 2022 audit by MSHA’s Division of Accountability found both Mt. Pleasant and Pineville were either not in compliance or needed a corrective action plan for inspections. Thirteen of 21 underground mine inspections reviewed from the Mt. Pleasant office didn’t include documentation of tests for multi-gas detectors. And while auditors didn’t find any issues requiring a corrective action plan for Pineville, they found inspectors were using tools from the mine operators to complete their inspections, which isn’t allowed.

In addition to being a key inspection hub, the Pineville office has an outsized role in overseeing the Part 90 program, which allows coal miners who develop early signs of lung disease the right to transfer to another role. The Pineville and Beckley district offices oversee about 78% of the country’s active part 90 miners.

The office shutdowns also raise questions about how the mining agency will implement a rule, developed during the Biden administration, that would require about 1,100 coal mines in the US to cut respirable silica levels in half.

When inhaled, silica dust can scar workers’ lungs, leading to the disease silicosis, which makes it difficult to breathe. In severe cases, patients need lung transplants to recover. A rise in the number of miners with Black Lung and other respiratory diseases prompted rulemaking on the regulation, which would cover more than 200,000 workers.

The Trump administration hasn’t taken a clear position in a legal challenge to the Biden-era rule. Willie Dodson, whose team at Appalachian Voices monitors the health impacts of mines in communities, said MSHA needs more resources to protect miners’ long-term health.

“Even though we’re seeing coal production go down, we’re seeing black lung go up—they’re cutting way more sandstone than they used to, to get to the coal,” Dodson said.

Updated to include reporting about impact on silica dust rulemaking. The map was earlier corrected to reflect most recent data