{"id":520377,"date":"2010-04-08T10:40:02","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T14:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/climateprogress.org\/?p=22726"},"modified":"2010-04-08T10:40:02","modified_gmt":"2010-04-08T14:40:02","slug":"don-blankenship%e2%80%99s-record-of-profits-over-safety-%e2%80%9ccoal-pays-the-bills%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/520377","title":{"rendered":"Don Blankenship\u2019s record of profits over safety: \u201cCoal pays the bills\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Don<\/a>After the worst coal mining disaster<\/a> in at least 25 years, Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is facing long-overdue scrutiny<\/a> for his record of putting coal profits over fundamental safety<\/a> and health concerns. Blankenship, a right-wing activist millionaire<\/a> who sits on the boards of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Mining Association, used his company\u2019s ties to the industry-dominated Bush administration to paper over Massey\u2019s egregious environmental and health violations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Massey rewarded Republicans with massive donations after the company avoided paying billions in fines for a 2000 coal slurry disaster in Martin County, three times bigger than the Exxon Valdez. After both mine inspectors and Massey employees got the same message that it was more important to \u201crun coal\u201d than to follow safety rules, a deadly fire broke out in the Aracoma Alma mine in 2006, burning two men alive.\u00a0 Brad Johnson has the full story of Blankenship\u2019s reckless pursuit of profits over human safety in this TP repost<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Blankenship was abetted by former employees placed at the highest levels of the federal mine safety system. Massey COO Stanley Suboleski<\/a> was named a commissioner<\/a> of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission in 2003 and was nominated in December 2007 to run the Energy Department\u2019s Office of Fossil Energy. Suboleski is now back on the Massey board<\/a>. After being rejected twice by the Senate, one-time Massey executive Dick Stickler<\/a> was put in charge of the MSHA in a recess appointment in October 2006. In the 1990s, Stickler oversaw Massey subsidiary<\/a> Performance Coal, the operator of the deadly Upper Big Branch Mine, after managing Beth Energy mines, which \u201cincurred injury rates double the national average<\/a>.\u201d Bush named Stickler acting secretary when the recess appointment expired in January 2008.<\/p>\n

Below are further details<\/a> of these two past incidents that foretold Blankenship\u2019s latest disaster:<\/p>\n

THE FATAL ARACOMA MINE FIRE<\/h2>\n

\"AracomaBlankenship Branded Deadly Fire At Dangerous Aracoma Mine \u201cStatistically Insignificant.\u201d<\/strong> In the most egregious case of preventable death before the Upper Big Branch explosion, Massey\u2019s Aracoma Coal Co. agreed to \u201cplead guilty to 10 criminal charges, including one felony, and pay $2.5 million in criminal fines\u201d after two workers died in a fire at the Aracoma Alma No. 1 Mine in Melville, West Virginia. Massey also paid $1.7 million in civil fines. The mine \u201chad 25 violations of mandatory health and safety laws\u201d before the fire on January 19, 2006, but Massey CEO Don Blankenship passed the deaths off as \u201cstatistically insignificant.\u201d [Logan Banner, 9\/1\/06<\/a>; Charleston Gazette, 12\/24\/08<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Federal Mine Inspector Who Wanted To Shut Down Mine Told To \u201cBack Off.\u201d<\/strong> Days before fire broke out in the Aracoma mine, a federal mine inspector tried to close down that section of the mine, but \u201cwas told by his superior to back off and let them run coal, that there was too much demand for coal.\u201d Massey failed to notify authorities of the fire until two hours after the disaster. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4\/23\/06<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Blankenship Memo: \u201cCoal Pays the Bills.\u201d<\/strong> Three months before the Aracoma mine fire, Massey CEO Don Blankenship sent managers a memo saying, \u201cIf any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal . . . you need to ignore them and run coal. This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills.\u201d [Logan Banner, 9\/1\/06<\/a>]<\/p>\n

THE MARTIN COUNTY COAL-SLURRY DISASTER<\/h2>\n

\"MartinThree Times the Volume of the Exxon Valdez Spill.<\/strong> Massey Energy is the parent of Martin County Coal, responsible for the \u201cnation\u2019s largest man-made environmental disaster east of the Mississippi\u201d until the 2008 Tennesee coal-ash spill In October 2000, a coal slurry impoundment broke through an underground mine shaft and spilled over 300 million gallons of black, toxic sludge into the headwaters of Coldwater Creek and Wolf Creek,\u201d in Martin County, KY. [Lost Mountain<\/em>, p. 128<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Site Denied Superfund Status.<\/strong> Bush\u2019s Environmental Protection Agency \u201cdetermined that the slurry spill was not a release of a hazardous substance\u201d and thus ineligible for Superfund status. [KY EQC<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Sen. McConnell and Wife Stopped MSHA Investigation.<\/strong> U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, wife of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), oversaw the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Chao \u201cput on the brakes\u201d on the MSHA investigation into the spill by placing a McConnell staffer in charge. In 2002 a $5,600 fine was levied. That September Massey gave $100,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, chaired by McConnell. [Lexington Herald-Leader, 10\/2\/06<\/a>, OpenSecrets<\/a>]<\/p>\n

$2.4 Billion Becomes $20 Million.<\/strong> In May 2007 the EPA filed suit for $2.4 billion against Massey for violating \u201cClean Water Act more than 4,500 times from the beginning of 2000 to the end of 2006\u2033 in West Virginia and Kentucky, including the Martin County spill. In January 2008 Massey agreed to pay $20 million to settle the case. [Lexington Herald-Leader, 1\/18\/08]<\/p>\n

Photo credit: Bill Rhodes<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/span>The New York Times<\/em> reports that the families of coal miners have been registering their displeasure<\/a> with Blankenship:<\/p>\n
\n

Some of these tensions boiled over around 2 a.m. Tuesday when Mr. Blankenship arrived at the mine to announce the death toll to families who were gathered at the site. Escorted by at least a dozen state and other police officers, according to several witnesses, Mr. Blankenship prepared to address the crowd, but people yelled at him for caring more about profits than miners\u2019 lives.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span>Crooks & Liars recalls that Blankenship \u201cspent over $1 million dollars<\/a> along with other US Chamber buddies like Verizon to sponsor last year’s” right-wing Friends of America<\/a>” rally in West Virginia.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Lorelei Scarbro, an activist who fights on behalf of miners\u2019 rights, tells CNN: \u201cMassey Energy’s record speaks for itself. With an enormous amount of violations and previous deaths at this mine, I will leave it to you to decide if this company puts profits before the safety of its workers<\/a> or views its employees as a disposable commodity.\u201d Scarbro\u2019s husband was a coal miner who died of black lung.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the worst coal mining disaster in at least 25 years, Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is facing long-overdue scrutiny for his record of putting coal profits over fundamental safety and health concerns. Blankenship, a right-wing activist millionaire who sits on the boards of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Mining Association, used […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":687,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-520377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/687"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}