A western Kentucky mine where two miners were trapped and killed by the collapse of a highwall Friday has been repeatedly cited for safety violations in the two years it has been operated by Armstrong Coal. The miners died at Equality Boot Mine in Centertown, Kentucky Friday after an unexcavated face of an exposed strip-mining site — known as a highwall — collapsed on their truck as they were driving.

In April, the Mine Safety and Health Administration cited Armstrong Coal for an incident involving the stability of a highwall at the same mine, the Associated Press reported Saturday. Though a company spokesman said that citation was unrelated to last week’s collapse, Armstrong Coal has a history of safety violations at the site. MSHA has cited Armstrong for at least 15 safety violations in the two years it has operated the mine, the Louisville Courier-Journal reports:

Armstrong has operated the Equality mine since December 2008 and has been producing coal there since 2010.

As of the end of September, the mine employed 129 people and had produced 1.5 million tons of coal for the year to date, MSHA records show.

The mine was cited for nine safety violations with $1,531 in penalties in 2010 and 6 violations carrying $1,394 in penalties this year, according to MSHA’s citation database.

Some of the citations were for violations of regulations governing the placement of materials on the tops of pits or highwalls and the operation of mining equipment, the records show.

Armstrong isn’t the only coal company to experience a fatal accident at a mine where it had been repeatedly cited for safety violations. Massey Energy amassed thousands of safety violations at its Upper Big Branch mine near Beckley, West Virginia, before an explosion there killed 29 miners in 2010. Days later, two miners died in a roof collapse at the Dotiki Mine in Providence, Kentucky. Federal inspectors had cited owner and operator Alliance Resource Partners with 840 safety violations in the 16 months preceding the accident.

Still, many of Kentucky’s politicians continue to look the other way when it comes to enforcing and strengthening mine safety laws. After the 2010 accidents, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) and other Kentucky politicians largely avoided questions about the efficacy of the nation’s mine safety laws. Just days after the Dotiki explosion, Gov. Steve Beshear (D) appeared at the opening of another Kentucky mine owned by Alliance but made no mention of mine safety or of Alliance’s shoddy safety history. Before that, Beshear fired Ron Mills, head of Kentucky’s mining permit agency, for refusing dozens of Alliance’s permits, and Beshear also appointed one of Alliance’s top safety officials to the Kentucky Mining Board, despite the fact that at least nine miners have died at Alliance-owned mines since 2005.

Most infamously, Sen. Rand Paul (R) — who issued a statement on the accident Friday — suggested during his 2010 campaign that the coal industry should be able to regulate itself, as ThinkProgress noted at the time:

“The bottom line is: I’m not an expert, so don’t give me the power in Washington to be making rules,” Paul said at a recent campaign stop in response to questions about April’s deadly mining explosion in West Virginia…“You live here, and you have to work in the mines. You’d try to make good rules to protect your people here. If you don’t, I’m thinking that no one will apply for those jobs.”

Federal investigators determined that both the Upper Big Branch and Dotiki disasters could have been prevented, and given the recent safety violations, a similar verdict at Equality would not be a surprise. Still, little has emerged from those tragedies to improve mine safety laws, with political leaders instead using industry-wide talking points to decry others of waging a “War on Coal.” It’s enough to beg the question: Are Kentucky’s political leaders putting their Big Coal campaign donors ahead of actual human lives?

By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Today, Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) asked a set of companies that profit from minerals on public lands to let American taxpayers see if they are getting a fair return. As ThinkProgress reported last month, Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) and Grijalva sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office asking for a comparison of corporate profits and taxpayer benefits from mineral extraction on public lands. Because the GAO report will take over a year to complete, today Grijalva hastened the investigation and sent letters to 14 oil, gas, and mining companies asking them to outline the financial value of the leases on public lands that they own.

In the letters, Grijalva explained his rationale:

I believe in transparency and effective public regulations that balance corporate and taxpayer interests. As I’m sure you’ll agree, taxpayers deserve a full accounting of the economic activity that takes place on land they own, including the public financial benefits.

Grijalva continued in his press release:

Our mineral wealth and public lands belong to the American taxpayers and held in trust by the federal government, but for too long they’ve been handed out to private companies that only care about the short-term bottom line. It’s time they open their books to public scrutiny and show us how much they’re making from cheap leases and how much they’re giving back to the public.

By December 15, the companies are asked to provide a detailed analysis for fiscal year 2010 of: the value of the minerals extracted from public lands, the cost to lease the lands, the royalties and fees paid to American taxpayers, and the projected value of extraction on the public lands mineral leases the companies hold. Most mining companies are not required to pay a royalty to the federal government due to the 1872 Mining Law.

Companies on the list are not exhaustive of all of those that own public land mineral leases, but are a sample of the different corporate interests—oil, gas, coal, copper, gold, and others. They are: Alpha Natural Resources, Barrick Gold Company, BG Americas & Global LNG, BHP Billiton, BP America, CONSOL Energy, Denison Mines, ExxonMobil, Freeport McMoRan, Peabody Energy, Rio Tinto Minerals, Rio Tinto Copper, Shell Oil, and Total Holdings USA.

These letters asking about the profits of some of the wealthiest companies in the world comes just as the House of Representatives will be voting on a bill today to give the third-largest copper deposit in the world to a mining company, without any royalties or returns to the taxpayer from the mineral development. The Resolution Copper Company, which stands to benefit from Congressman Paul Gosar’s (R-AZ) bill facilitating the land transfer, is a multinational mining conglomerate owned by Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, both of which are on Grijalva’s list to receive letters about their profits.

By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Public Lands Project, Center for American Progress.

The Resolution Copper Company, owned by the large multi-national mineral conglomerates Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, is pushing a bill in Congress that would give them federal land in southeastern Arizona and allow mining of one of the largest known copper deposits in the world. In return, the company would give back a plot of land to the federal government. The Resolution Copper land-exchange bill has a blatant loophole, delaying any environmental impact statement for mining these lands until after the land exchange is completed.

That would mean that after the deal is done and the tailings pond leaks, like it did at the Clayton Silver Mine in Idaho, or after major fish kills, like the ones in the Alamosa River due to cyanide leaching from the Summitville gold mine in Colorado, we could say that the too-late environmental analysis revealed a threat. That’s not the point of our environmental laws, which recognize that the value of clean air and water needs to be considered before the government sells off public resources to private interests.

However, during a hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), the sponsor of the bill, pulled a bait and switch by focusing on the land that would be conserved, rather than the parcel that would be given to the mining company. Gosar told Mary Wagner, Associate Chief, U.S. Forest Service, that allowing a mining company to plunder public land is “restoring the ecological balance”:

GOSAR: Now I’m a big steward of my environment so I just heard something also from my friend on the other side, that value for the San Pedro River. Ms. Wegner, could you put a value on that as an ecosystem, could you put a price for me? Give me a price in dollars.

WAGNER: I think both the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service/Department of Agriculture have testified to the importance of the non-federal parcels, the ecological values and the important of these properties. No, I couldn’t put a price on it.

GOSAR: They are almost infinite, because it’s a giving process, we’re restoring the ecological balance within the whole ecosystem. That is unbelievably much more valuable.

Watch it:

 

On the one hand, his bill would set aside 5,300 acres of land currently owned by Resolution Copper for conservation purposes.

On the other hand, as written, Gosar’s bill says the extent of impacts would not be known until too late because the company would not be required to undergo environmental review or even submit a plan of operations until after the land exchange takes place. Questions like where the mine tailings would go, where large amounts of water would come from, and how erosion and subsidence from a gigantic underground mine would be dealt with won’t be investigated until the deal is signed, sealed, and delivered.

Mineral development is an appropriate use of public lands, but not when it comes in the form of a hasty land exchange that circumvents environmental laws. Unlike what Gosar seems to think, environmental stewardship in this country is based upon making sure that the public is involved in decisions that may affect its health and environment. As Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) said today, “this bill short-circuits fundamental good government policies.”