House Bill 1335 Coal mining. Reps. Stilwell, Battles, and Davis. This bill was passed 10-0 by the Committee on Labor and Employment. I don’t pretend to have even a nodding acquaintance with the state’s mining laws. The bill appears to have a fair number of technical corrections you often see in amendments to fairly old statutes. But, there is obviously some substantive stuff in there as well having to do with the mining board. What caught my eye was a provision having to do with the coal mine maps required by IC 22-10-2-1.5. A coal mine operator has to maintain an accurate and up to date map of the mine, showing things like what part of the mine is active and what is not, escapeways, and adjacent mine workings within 1000 feet. Current law requires that the map be available for inspection by the director of the Indiana bureau of mines, state coal mine inspectors, the miners in the mine, operators of adjacent coal mines, and persons owning, leasing, or residing on adjacent areas. This bill removes coal mine inspectors as people entitled to inspect the maps.
The bill also does a number of other things with respect to the administration and oversight of mines that I do not pretend to understand.
[tags]HB1335-2007, labor[/tags]
Well, that smells dirty right there.
I guess this is so that state mine inspectors can’t prove that the maps were out of date after some coal mine workers die in a part of the mine that wasn’t on the map.
Reps. Stilwell, Battles, and Davis: EVIL