In March, I testified
before a House subcommittee on energy and mineral resources about
the impact of climate change on public lands. There were seven
witnesses, and one was Robert Murray, founder of Murray Energy and
owner of the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah. This, as everyone knows,
is the mine that recently collapsed, burying six miners; then it
killed three men who were attempting a rescue when the mine
collapsed again.
Murray, who sat next to me five months
ago, shouted most of his testimony as he reiterated one point:
Carbon regulation of any sort would hurt poor working people and
the families who depend on his coal mines for their livelihood. He
said, “The unfolding debate is totally skewed and one-sided,
and it is preoccupied with possible speculative environmental
disasters of climate change. Few are giving adequate attention to
the destruction that we will definitely see…for American working
people from…climate change proposals that have been introduced in
the Congress…” Murray is apparently so adamant on this point that
he used a press conference after the mine cave-in to continue his
lobbying.
Robert Murray became the public face of the
mine disaster, but he’s also an American success story, a
free-market wunderkind and a darling of the right. “I am the
founder of Murray Energy Corporation from a mortgaged home,” he
told Congress proudly. “The United States of America is a wonderful
country. Today, I have 3,000 employees working in the most
depressed areas of the United States of America.” The mine
disaster, and Murray’s position on climate change, can also be seen
as American entrepreneurship gone bad; it’s the story of how one’s
balance sheet slowly becomes corrupted by the drive to get more, or
get it faster, or get it cheaper.
People have been
working in the Crandall Canyon Mine for more than 60 years. In
1997, the company bought a longwall, an advanced piece of mining
equipment, which dramatically increased production. But then the
coal ran out. According to the industry newsletter, Coal &
Energy Price Report, the mine was near the end of its life,
producing 604,000 tons in 2006, down from 1.6 million tons in 2005.
Production dropped by more than half in the last 12 months.
Unwilling to just shut it down, Murray’s company embarked on a new
plan to extract every last bit from the mine. According to an
expert quoted by the Deseret Morning News, the Crandall Mine before
the recent disaster was pulling out coal that should have been left
standing to support the roof. The operators used a tactic known as
“retreat mining,” where miners pull the remaining pillars of coal
and collapse the mine behind them. The federal Mine Safety and
Health Administration may have allowed the mine to remove too much.
When he lobbies in Washington against any action dealing
with climate change, Robert Murray stakes out a position in defense
of the American working family; yet his own mines are notorious for
safety violations. Crandall Canyon has received 325 citations since
January 2004, 116 of them “significant and substantial,” according
to the government. This year alone, inspectors issued 32 citations,
14 of them significant, and last month, inspectors said the mine
violated a rule requiring the maintenance of two separate emergency
escape passages in any given workspace. Ironically, MSHA found that
this was one of the country’s safer mines, with fewer
fatalities and fewer safety violations last year than the national
average.
Murray’s other mine, in Ohio, also has a long
history of safety violations, including five deaths in the last
decade, according to a report by the Columbus Dispatch.
Carbon regulation could hardly hurt mining families more than
killing off a member of the family. But Murray has painted himself
as the friend of miners, showing his scars to say he is one of
them. He presents himself as patriotic, humble and well
intentioned. But speaking at televised news conferences during the
Utah mine disaster, he appeared just the way I saw him in a
Washington, D.C., hearing room — boastful, self-righteous and
arrogant.
You could say that Murray has fathered twin
disasters. The underground disaster cost the lives of nine men and
injured six others. The other disaster will occur in the atmosphere
if his lobbying continues to be successful, and it will permanently
affect the lives of the miners’ children. In both cases, Murray is
doing what it takes to make his business flourish. Finished with
the Crandall Mine, which he has now closed forever, Murray intends
to begin retreat-mining the sky, pulling the very heavens down upon
us all with the misguided sense that this is what his country wants
of him.
Auden Schendler is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He
is environmental director for the Aspen Skiing Company in Aspen,
Colorado.
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