The New York Times-20080128-Mining Agency Finds Penalties Lapse

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Mining Agency Finds Penalties Lapse

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The federal agency that regulates the nation's mining industry says that it has failed to issue penalties for hundreds of citations issued since 2000 and that the problem could extend back beyond 1995.

Matthew Faraci, a spokesman for the agency, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, said Sunday, We would guess it goes back far beyond 1995, but because of a lack of electronic records before that year, I can't verify that.

Preliminary data showed that penalties had not been assessed against companies that received about 4,000 citations issued by the agency from January 2000 to July 2006, The Sunday Gazette-Mail of Charleston reported.

The agency's director, Richard E. Stickler, told the newspaper that a review also showed that penalties had never been assessed for a few hundred citations issued in 1996.

The agency recently discovered the problem after it checked into whether a Kentucky coal operator had been assessed a penalty after a an accident in 2005 in which a miner bled to death after not receiving proper first aid.