One year after the deaths at the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah, little has been accomplished at the federal level to help prevent further mine collapse disasters. Although the House passed legislation addressing safety issues raised by this collapse and a series of other mine accidents in recent years, the Senate has not acted. Reports about the causes of the Utah mine collapse vary in assigning responsibility, which has led to different allegations about who bears the burden for the nine deaths at Crandall Canyon.

Aug. 6 marked the one-year anniversary of the mine collapse that entombed six coal miners. Only days later, during attempts to rescue or recover the miners, three more people died when another section of the mine collapsed. On Aug. 20, 2007, rescue efforts at the mine were called off indefinitely due to concern about the safety of rescue workers. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, which conducted its own investigation of the collapse, issued a press release on the anniversary saying:

This anniversary reminds us of the significant risks miners still face while extracting the coal that meets our nation's energy needs. The several mine tragedies that have occurred recently have been the result of weak laws, outlaw mine operators, and government agencies asleep at the switch. This is unacceptable. We must work aggressively toward a future where all miners can return home safely after their shifts.

Miller introduced H.R. 2768, the S-MINER Act, on June 19, 2007, in the wake of a series of mine collapses in 2006 that killed 47 miners, the highest number of fatalities since 2001. The House passed the bill Jan. 16 and sent it to the Senate, where no action has occurred. The bill requires a series of safety improvements and requires the Secretary of Labor and other entities to provide greater protections for miners and to explore new ways of increasing safety.

Two new reports claim different actors are responsible for the mine failure. A July 24 report by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) said the mine collapse was caused by a "flawed mine design" and that the mining plan "was destined to fail." The report also states that Genwal Resources, Inc. (GRI), the company employed by mine owner Murray Energy Co. to operate the mine, knew of but did not report a series of coal bursts to MSHA as required by federal regulations. The reporting failures "deprived MSHA of the information it needed to properly assess and approve GRI's mining plans."

As a result of its investigation, MSHA cited GRI with numerous serious violations and fined the company $1.6 million. MSHA also fined GRI's engineering consultant on the mine design, Agapito Associates Inc., $220,000 for its flawed analysis of the roof-control plan.

The second report, issued July 25, was performed at the order of Department of Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and was conducted independently of MSHA officials. Earnest C. Teaster, Jr. and Joseph W. Pavlovich, two former MSHA managers, conducted the independent review with the help of five MSHA employees. The team was charged with "evaluating and identifying deficiencies in MSHA's actions preceding the initial accident, evaluating and identifying deficiencies during the rescue attempt, and providing meaningful recommendations to better protect the safety and health of miners and prevent such accidents in the future."

The independent report issued scores of findings about MSHA's failures in the plan approval process, inspection and rescue activities, and staffing and resource utilization. In short, the investigators found MSHA's deficiencies "to be evident of a systemic problem, both in District 9 [the regional office], and within MSHA as a whole." The report concludes that MSHA should not have approved the mining plan for Crandall Canyon and that, contrary to MSHA's assertion in its report, MSHA officials knew about the outbursts at the mine in the months before the collapse. In addition, MSHA bears some responsibility for the subsequent rescue failure because it chose not to bring two experts to the site who were more familiar with western, deep-mining conditions and should have been involved in the rescue operations.

Prior to the Education and Labor committee's release of the investigation of the collapse, completed in May, Miller sent a criminal referral to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) asking it to investigate whether the mine's general manager may have hindered MSHA's oversight of the mine. According to an Aug. 1 Salt Lake Tribune article, DOJ is still considering the request.

The Tribune reported that the families of the dead and injured miners received an extensive briefing from MSHA on its findings but learned little that was new to them. An attorney representing the families was quoted in the article as saying, "This [MSHA] report confirms and underscores the allegations we made in our complaint… This clearly makes it known that these deaths and injuries were preventable."