Will Coal Finally Clean Up its Act?

I started writing about how dirty "clean coal" is back in 2010 and 2011 (here, here, and here), originally driven by the horrific death of 29 miners in the Upper Big Branch mine in April 2010, the worst mine disaster in the US in more than four decades. Massey Energy, owner of the Upper Big Branch, had come to see fines for safety violations as simply a cost of doing business, and it seemed as though no one could do anything about it.

Finally, maybe, someone is.

A 2011 Mine Safety and Health Administration report explicitly blamed safety violations at the mine for allowing coal dust and methane gas to collect and ignite (MSHA report, here), but it wasn't until November of last year that Don Blankenship, Massey Energy's former chief executive, was indicted on four criminal counts by a federal grand jury in West Virginia (13 November 2014 New York Times article by Trip Gabriel, here; indictment, here). Massey Energy is now owned by Alpha Natural Resources, which acquired Massey in 2011.

Penalties for the criminal counts Blankenship is facing, which include conspiracy to violate mine safety and health standards and conspiracy to defraud the United States (by obstructing the Labor Department and MSHA efforts to enforce mine safety standards), could add up to more than 30 years of prison time.

Blankenship's trial has not yet begun (originally scheduled to begin in January, it has been postponed to October; Blankenship has pleaded not guilty and is free on $5 million bond), but something has changed in West Virginia.

In a long article in Sunday's New York Times, David Segal recounts what brought down Blankenship, a man who had long acted as though the state in general and his coal mines in particular were a private fiefdom. The short answer is: hubris.

...How did Mr. Blankenship become the first coal chief in the region to face charges that could put him in prison? One answer is that the tragedy of Upper Big Branch was of such a scale and its apparent causes so mercenary -- prosecutors say the explosion stemmed from a hellbent emphasis on production at the expense of safety -- that a criminal case may have been inevitable. It came, too, at a time when economic shifts have reduced the power of coal kinds, who now rule over fiefs in decline.
Then there is Mr. Blankenship himself, a man who can come across as a cartoon of a corporate villain. He tangled with inspectors and buffaloed rivals. He is a Republican in a state that was long a Democratic redoubt, and he seemed to relish making public officials his enemies.

And while many senior managers -- think of the bankers who nearly ran this economy off the rails in 2008 -- insulate themselves from criminal liability with layers of middle management, Blankenship was micro-manager par excellence. There's no way he can pretend not to have know what was happening at Upper Big Branch.

Segal quotes a West Virginia University law professor: "One reason that Blankenship is being prosecuted is that he was different from other top coal executives. Most CEOs don't get production records every half-hour by fax. That places him right in the mine, hands on. That makes him vulnerable."

How vulnerable? We'll have to wait and see.