Pit & Quarry, December 2018

THE INDUSTRY WORKPLACE EXAMS STREAMLINING AND SCOFFLAWS O bservers of the mine safety enforcement landscape will remember 2018 as the year of the workplace exam The modif ied standard finally took effect on June 2 Recognizing the learning curve for both operators and inspectors that would naturally follow this more comprehensive regulation the Mine Safety Health Administration MSHA notified the industry that inspectors would not actively enforce the standard until Oct 1 as long as operators were deemed to be making progress toward achieving compliance For most operators that provided a little leeway to fine tune workplace exam records and orient their workforce regarding the new requirements For a few operators it initiated a mad dash to meet the deadline THE DEREGULATION AGENDA While the workplace exam standard had everyones attention there were a number of other developments this year that will also have an impact on enforcement and regulation in 2019 For example many who watched the deregulation agenda of the Trump administration advance from one agency to the next have waited to see what if any impact it would have at MSHA To a certain extent the jury is still out In terms of decreasing or eliminating regulations that affect the industry there has not yet been much tangible progress Of course it has to be pointed out that MSHAs political leader Assistant Secretary David Zatezalo was sworn in back in November 2017 He has only had 12 months on the job to learn the agency and move the process forward Zatezalo continues to solicit comments from the industry regarding regulatory reform ideas and the agency began posting those comments in May Zatezalo assured the mining industry that he has reviewed all of these comments and is looking for opportunities to address some of the issues KEY REGULATORY UPDATES With respect to new regulations of course it is hard not to argue that the impact from the previous administration to the current administration has been dramatic regardless of your perspective Rulemaking priorities regarding crystalline silica and underground proximity detection have shifted to no deadline pre rule request forinformation formats or were eliminated from the agenda altogether Zatezalo publicly identified proximity detection as a focus for future action and also indicated that some action may be necessary to bring the silica standard in line with the Occupational Safety Health Administrations lower permissible exposure limit To the extent that these efforts are pushed forward it is safe to say they are long range projects One specific MSHA goal that does appear to be on the immediate horizon is an effort to streamline the agency to maximize manpower and budgetary resources The One MSHA Initiative is focused on eliminating the stark separation between coal and metal nonmetal within the agency and enabling the consolidation of enforcement efforts by the coal and metal nonmetal districts Theoretically this may allow the agency to reduce the number of district managers and assistant district managers and utilize its manpower based on geography rather than on the coalmetal nonmetal distinction Given the many significant differences between coal and metal nonmetal operations MSHA leadership has acknowledged that this program would certainly require a level of comprehensive training INITIATIVES TO WATCH MSHA headquarters also emphasized 48 PIT QUARRY December 2018 pitandquarry com NSSGA MSHA Assistant Secretary David Zatezalo addressed seat belt safety earlier this year at the National Stone Sand Gravel Associations Annual Convention stating that it is very difficult to enforce Says Zatezalo I would tell you from my own experience that my father would never wear a seat belt Toward the end of his life I bought him a car and he started wearing a seat belt He said the dings and alarms made it easier to put the seat belt on STATEOF MSHA THE LAW BY BILL DORAN AND MARGO LOPEZ