Opinion ID: 520277
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Mandatory Safety and Health Standards

Text: 17 Initially, then, we face the threshold question of whether and to what extent the roof standards in this case are mandatory health or safety standards as that term is used in Sec. 101(a)(9), since only such mandatory standards are included within the no-less protection directive of the Act. A brief account of MSHA's regulatory scheme is necessary to answer that question. 18 MSHA regulates mine operation in two ways. First, it promulgates pursuant to Sec. 101 regulations that establish general and mandatory standards with which all mine operators must comply. Second, it requires mine operators to compile comprehensive plans addressing specific subjects such as roof control and ventilation. 30 U.S.C.A. Secs. 862(a) and 863(a). (We are here concerned with the roof control plans.) These plans are then submitted to an MSHA district manager for approval. Once approved, the plans are mandatory in the sense that a violation of the requirements in the plans constitutes a violation of the Act. 7 19 The specific contents of any individual mine operation plan are determined through consultation between the mine operator and the district manager. To guide this process, MSHA has promulgated criteria which should be met in all plans. For example, one roof bolt criterion which was superseded by the new regulations stated: All components of the roof bolt assembly should comply with the American National Standards Institute, 'Specifications for Roof Bolting Materials in Coal Mines'. 30 C.F.R. Sec. 75.200-7(a)(1) (1986). Plan components may be taken directly from the criteria; alternatively, the mine operator and/or district manager may suggest requirements that do not appear in the criteria. District managers, however, were explicitly prohibited by the old regulations from approving any plan requirements which did not provide the same level of protection as the criteria: 20 Sec. 75.200-6 Criteria for approval of roof control plans. 21 Sections 75.200-7 through 75.200-14 set out the criteria by which District Managers will be guided in approving roof control plans on a mine-by-mine basis. Additional measures may be required. Roof control plans which do not conform to these criteria may be approved providing the operator can satisfy the District Manager that the resultant roof conditions will provide no less than the same measure of protection to the miners. 22 30 C.F.R. Sec. 75.200-6 (1986). Individual plans could, therefore, incorporate requirements to supplement or supplant standards set out in the criteria, but these alternative requirements had to protect miners at least as much as the criteria standards. 23 Prior to the new rules under review, a roof control plan usually included both a core of generally-applicable protections (derived from either the criteria regulations or MSHA policy), and other mine-specific standards designed to address particularized safety and health concerns in the individual mine. One of the stated objectives of the new rulemaking was to simplify these roof plans by putting the more generally-applicable standards into universal mandatory standard form, thereby allowing the plans to focus on predominantly mine-specific requirements. Roof Support Standards, 53 Fed.Reg. 2,354 (1988) (final rule). 24 Against this background, we now turn to the critical question of whether the pre-existing regulations, establishing a scheme in which roof control plans were approved by MSHA according to a set of criteria, amounted to a mandatory standard, as that term is used in Sec. 101(a)(9), so as to invoke the no-less protection rule. The question raises some rather intricate issues of statutory interpretation. 25 First, the term mandatory health or safety standards is defined in the Act as the interim mandatory health or safety standards established by subchapters II and III of this chapter, and the standards promulgated pursuant to subchapter I of this chapter. 30 U.S.C.A. Sec. 802(l ). Subchapter I of this chapter contains, in Sec. 101, the basic grant of authority to the Secretary to promulgate such standards: 26 The Secretary shall by rule in accordance with procedures set forth in this section and in accordance with section 553 of Title 5 ... develop, promulgate, and revise as may be appropriate, improved mandatory health or safety standards for the protection of life and prevention of injuries in coal or other mines. 27 30 U.S.C.A. Sec. 811(a). The only other source of rulemaking authority appears in subchapter V of the Act, Sec. 508: The Secretary ... [is] authorized to issue such regulations as [she] deems appropriate to carry out any provision of this chapter. 30 U.S.C.A. Sec. 957. Regulations promulgated pursuant to Sec. 508 alone do not establish mandatory health or safety standards for the purposes of Sec. 101(a)(9)'s no-less protection rule. 8 28 Since MSHA did not specifically identify the source of the roof plan regulations, see Mandatory Safety Standards, Underground Coal Mines, 35 Fed.Reg. 17,890, 17,893 (1970), 9 we must rely on the traditional tools of statutory construction to determine whether these regulations fall within the statutory definition of mandatory standards. We find that they clearly do. 29 Congress itself established the basic requirement that mine operators adopt approved roof control plans as an interim mandatory standard in the Mine Act: 30 Each operator shall undertake to carry out on a continuing basis a program to improve the roof control of each coal mine and the means and measures to accomplish such system. The roof and ribs of all active underground roadways, travelways, and working places shall be supported or otherwise controlled adequately to protect persons from falls of the roof or ribs. A roof control plan and revisions thereof suitable to the roof conditions and mining system of each coal mine and approved by the Secretary shall be adopted and set out in printed form within sixty days after the operative date of this subchapter. 31 30 U.S.C.A. Sec. 862(a). The statutory standard obviously did not specify all of the requirements that had to be included in the plan. Congress established a limited number of explicit requirements for roof support, such as the requirement that adequate supplies of roof support materials be provided in all working areas of the mine, 30 U.S.C.A. Sec. 862(c), and that safety inspections be conducted prior to the commencement of any work, 30 U.S.C.A. Sec. 862(f). But the vast bulk of requirements for achieving a roof control plan suitable to the roof conditions and mining system of each coal mine were left to be developed by the mine operator and MSHA. 10 In particular, Congress left essentially all the standards for roof bolts and roof support removal to be developed exclusively through the roof plan approval process. See 30 U.S.C.A. Secs. 862(d) and (e) (1986). MSHA predictably implemented the statutory interim standard by promulgating criteria to guide plan approval by its district managers. District managers were prohibited under these implementing regulations from approving any plan covering roof bolts or support removal which failed to afford as much protection to miners as the criteria did. 32 Congress explicitly stated its reasons for relying on mandatory roof control plans in the 1977 Mine Act: Such individually tailored plans, with a nucleus of commonly accepted practices, are the best method of regulating such complex and potentially multifaceted problems as ventilation, roof control and the like. S.Rep. No. 95-181, 95th Cong., 1st Sess. 25 (1977), U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1977, p. 3425. Congress obviously intended these roof control plans to afford comprehensive protection against roof collapse--the leading cause of injuries and death in underground coal mines, Roof Support Standards, 53 Fed.Reg. 2,354 (1988). Indeed, these plans were intended to be more comprehensive than uniform mandatory standards because in addition to a nucleus, id., of practices that are necessary to prevent roof collapse in any mine, they were to include whatever unique measures were necessary to address the unique attributes of a particular mine. This is undoubtedly the virtue that Congress saw in requiring comprehensive individually tailored roof control plans. 33 In this respect we point out our disagreement with intervenor American Mining Congress' (AMC) argument that these roof control plans were intended to contain only provisions tailored to mine-specific conditions. AMC argues that roof control plans could legitimately be used to impose only those requirements necessary to address unique conditions peculiar to each mine. Brief for Intervenor at 6. As a consequence, AMC argues that any coerced incorporation of [the] nationally applicable criteria [found in MSHA's roof support regulations] was itself a violation of the Mine Act, id. at 12, n. 8, any generally-applicable criteria were not legitimate components of the approved roof control plan required by the mandatory standard and so the no-less protection rule does not require that the new regulations be as protective as the old criteria. 11 34 Nothing in the original interim standard established by Congress suggests that the plan was to be confined exclusively to mine-specific conditions. As we have already emphasized, Congress relied almost entirely on the roof control plan to protect miners from the most common cause of fatalities. AMC's position would drastically undercut the rationale of such an approach and invite the curious paradox that any protective measure identified by the Secretary as of common value in most mines could not be imposed in any mine plan. It would border on the irrational for Congress to have established these plans as the interim exclusive method of regulating roof support and then to have so limited the Secretary's authority to insure their effectiveness. 35 The criteria that the Secretary promulgated to guide the approval of roof control plans identified measures which MSHA deemed necessary to achieve safety goals in many or most mines; the regulations however recognized that these measures might be inappropriate or subject to substitution under certain mine conditions. That fact alone does not support AMC's contention that those criteria were wholly advisory 12 and that it was therefore illegal for the Secretary to at times refuse to approve a plan until the operator incorporated particular criteria. 36 While mine operators were not per se required to comply with each and every criterion so that the criteria were not themselves mandatory standards, if the criteria were actually incorporated into an approved plan, the operator was bound to comply with them. Plans, on the other hand, could be approved by MSHA only if they either conformed to the criteria or provide[d] no less than the same measure of protection to the miners as the criteria. 30 C.F.R. Sec. 75-200-6 (1986). Therefore, if MSHA disagreed that a mine operator's alternative mine-specific measure protected as well as a generally-applicable criterion, MSHA was not only empowered but required to withhold approval of the plan until the mine operator incorporated the criterion. 13 Thus the criteria regulations implementing the Act's mandatory interim roof control plan standard themselves constituted a mandatory standard laying down a required level of protection for miners that had to be met by all plans. 37 To be sure, the Secretary may, as she has in fact done here, promulgate generally-applicable requirements on roof control as explicit mandatory standards under Sec. 101, thereby changing the focus of the roof control plan from establishing comprehensive protection to providing a supplementary set of regulations for individual mines. We do not agree with AMC, however, that the Secretary was, immediately upon passage of the Act, required to pursue the Sec. 101 notice and comment route for all generally-applicable mandatory standards and was prohibited from setting any general criteria as mandatory standards for approval of mine operators' plans pending adoption of particularized mandatory standards. 14 In advancing such a position, we believe, AMC has misconstrued the implication of an earlier opinion of this court and a more recent decision of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission (FMSHRC or Commission, the adjudicatory body responsible for hearing appeals from MSHA orders and decisions). 38 In Zeigler Coal Co. v. Kleppe, 536 F.2d 398 (D.C.Cir.1976), we held that violations of requirements in ventilation plans that were not themselves promulgated as mandatory standards nevertheless were enforceable as such under the 1969 Coal Act, which require[d] violation of a mandatory health or safety standard to bring [relevant enforcement provisions] into play. 536 F.2d at 403. 15 We stated that the term  'mandatory standard' can reasonably be read to include provisions of plans whose adoption is explicitly required under an existing mandatory standard. Id. at 409. In the course of reaching this conclusion, the court addressed the concern that if the Secretary was authorized to incorporate general requirements into mine plans and enforce them as mandatory standards, she might thereby circumvent the Act's requirement that mandatory standards be promulgated pursuant to Sec. 101's notice and comment procedures. 16 The court met this concern by observing that the plan idea was conceived for a quite narrow and specific purpose, id. at 407, and noting that 39 an operator might contest an action seeking to compel adoption of a plan, on the ground that it contained terms relating not to the particular circumstances of his mine, but rather imposed requirements of a general nature which should more properly have been formulated as a mandatory standard, under the provisions of Sec. 101. This would appear to render all but inconsequential the actual circumvention of Sec. 101 resulting from the enforceability of ventilation plans. For insofar as those plans are limited to conditions and requirements made necessary by peculiar circumstances of individual mines, they will not infringe on subject matter which could have been readily dealt with in mandatory standards of universal application. 40 Id. We read this caution in Zeigler to say only that the Secretary could abuse her discretion by utilizing plans rather than explicit mandatory standards to impose general requirements if by so doing she circumvented procedural requirements for establishing mandatory standards laid down in the Mine Act. Zeigler did not purport to ignore the considerable authority of the Secretary to determine what should more properly have been formulated as a mandatory standard under the provisions of Sec. 101, id., and to determine what is subject matter which could have been readily dealt with in mandatory standards of universal application, id. 41 In this case the roof plan approval criteria were promulgated according to notice and comment procedures to supplement the Act's mandatory interim standard that mine operators adopt an approved roof control plan. The level of miner protection provided by each plan, moreover, was calibrated to the criteria themselves, although they were not required to be implemented in each plan. The Secretary conducted the rulemaking under review precisely because she had made the determination that many of the criteria were the proper subject of separate mandatory standards. 17 Her recent action in this regard, however, does not constitute evidence that she abused her authority in failing to do so earlier or that she was in any way acting illegally in requiring that generally-applicable plan approval criteria or their equivalents be incorporated into mine plans. 42 The FMSHRC decision in Carbon County Coal Corp., 1984-1985 O.S.H. (CCH) p 27,385 (1985), is consistent with our interpretation of Zeigler. Carbon County involved a mine operator who proposed an alternative to a procedure (again not a criterion in the regulations) that the MSHA district manager had suggested be included in a ventilation plan. The district manager refused to allow the alternative and an administrative law judge upheld this decision. The Commission reversed on the ground that the district manager's rejection of Carbon County's alternative procedure was the result of a rote application of the MSHA guideline. Id. at 35,466. (The district manager had refused even to consider the alternative and to determine whether it was equivalent to the guideline in light of the particular conditions of Carbon County's mine.) 43 We read Carbon County to make the narrow point that mine operators are entitled to have alternative procedures evaluated by the district manager to determine if they achieve the safety objectives set out in MSHA regulations and policy; the Commission there conclude[d] that the uncontroverted material facts establishe[d] that MSHA's decision to impose the [disputed] provision was not based upon particular circumstances at the Carbon No. 1 Mine, but rather was imposed as a general rule applicable to all mines, and that as a consequence MSHA's insistence on the provision was not in accord with applicable Mine Act procedure. Id. at 35,467. Citing Zeigler, the Commission emphasized that 44 [t]his does not mean that the [ ] provision may not be applied at the Carbon No. 1 Mine. If negotiations on the ventilation plan resume, MSHA may determine, and may be able to establish that particular conditions at the mine warrant the inclusion of the [ ] provision in the ventilation plan. Also, if MSHA believes the [ ] provision to be of universal application, the Secretary may proceed to rulemaking under section 101 of the Mine Act and promulgate the [ ] provision as a nationally applicable mandatory safety standard. 45 Id. We decline to read into Carbon County anything more than we found in Zeigler, i.e., a warning that the Secretary should utilize mandatory standards for requirements of universal application. We reject the AMC's argument that under either decision the Secretary was in a plan precluded from requiring mine operators to incorporate measures necessary to achieve an overall level of miner protection on all pertinent aspects of roof control. 46 Thus we conclude, finally, that MSHA's implementing regulations including criteria for roof plan approval constituted a mandatory standard which required mine operators to adopt roof control plans and prohibited MSHA from approving these plans unless they protected at least as well as did the criteria. The criteria established a mandatory level of protection for the purposes of Sec. 101(a)(9)'s no-less protection rule. Accordingly, the Secretary was required to ensure that the new regulations she promulgated to replace the old criteria provisions did not reduce miner protection. 47