Cord Byrd: “Last year the coal mining industry recorded the highest fatality rate in 10 years: 47 coal miners perished. Perished.…”

“Last year the coal mining industry recorded the highest fatality rate in 10 years: 47 coal miners perished. Perished. They died. Many of these coal miners perished in the terrible tragedies at the Sago, Alma, and Darby Mines in West Virginia and Kentucky. In response, the Congress passed the MINER Act to help ensure better emergency preparedness in the coalfields, such as the underground installation of wireless communications and additional emergency breathing devices. In order to fund these new mandates, and in order to ensure continued compliance with already existing health and safety standards, the Senate Appropriations Committee recommended $13 million above the President's budget request for the Mine Safety and Health Administration in the fiscal year 2008 budget. I also note that because the President's budget failed to do so in fiscal years 2006 and 2007, the Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee secured funding, at my request, to hire additional mine safety inspectors and to bolster safety enforcement at MSHA. Since the Appropriations Committee reported this bill in June, another tragedy occurred in Utah where six miners were trapped at the Crandall Canyon Mine. During the rescue operation, three miners lost their lives, one of them a Federal mine inspector.”