Mine Safety

This Act: • Defines “mine manager;” • Requires facilities to submit emergency action plans when making an application for a license; • Establishes content requirements for the emergency action plan and where copies of the plan are made available; • Requires the implementation of emergency evacuation plans and firefighting programs; • Requires that by September 1, 2006, licensed facilities will be able to activate emergency action plans; • Requires mapping working sections in a mine and the designating escapeways; • Requires escapeway drills at all licensed coal mines; • Provides for telephone or equivalent two-way communication facilities in underground and surface coal mines by September 1, 2006; • Requires ventilation plans and roof control plans be submitted along with requests for licenses and include entrapments, roof falls, and inundation of the mine with liquid or gas in the events that trigger a mine rescue; • Requires mine ventilation plans and revisions to existing mine ventilation plans be submitted to and approved by the executive director of the Office of Mine Safety and Licensing; • Prohibits mine licensees from storing self-contained self-rescuers farther apart than 25 feet; • Provides that self-contained self-rescuers be deployed at not more than 45 minute walking intervals, be placed in storage units to prevent their destruction, and have luminescent signs, alarms, and strobe lights; • Prohibits using return airway as an escapeway and requires devices that direct miners to the surface at 100-foot intervals; • Prohibits riding under a trolley wire; • Defines “serious physical injury;” • Requires reporting accidents that involves serious physical injury or loss of life within 15 minutes after actual knowledge of the occurrence; and • Establishes a $100,000 dollar penalty for failure to report.