Mines Fight Strict Laws by Filing More Appeals.

[elleng]

At a hearing in February, Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, complained that the growing number of appeals by coal companies threatened to “render the federal efforts to hold mine operators accountable meaningless.” Mining safety experts have expressed similar concerns.

One in four citations issued against coal mines are now appealed by operators — three times the appeal rate before the law, according to regulators. The result is a backlog of 18,000 pending appeals and $210 million in contested penalties.

The appeals “are also allowing miners, in some cases the worst operators, to escape liability for which they are in fact liable and continue to put miners in harm’s way,” Mr. Miller said at the hearing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/us/07company.html?hpw