One Hundred Years of Federal Mining Safety and Health Research

One of the bills passed by Congress in 1976 to create a Department of Energy would have
entirely absorbed the functions of the Bureau into that new department, abolishing the Bureau as
it then existed. That bill was vetoed by President Ford. The law establishing DOE in 1977,
signed by President Carter, retained the Bureau as a separate agency within the Department of
the Interior. However, it did move additional functions from the Bureau to DOE, including
research on improving mining efficiency. Some of the Bureau staff and facilities devoted to
mining efficiency research were transferred to DOE in 1977. Most of these were transferred
back to the Bureau in the early 1980s.
By 1993, the Bureau’s future did not look promising. Director TS Ary left the Bureau at the
beginning of the Clinton Administration in January 1993. The continued existence of the Bureau
as an independent agency appeared uncertain, as no new Director was named for one and a half
years. Finally, President Clinton nominated Rhea Graham for the position in August 1994.
During this time, the Deputy Director, Dr. Herman Enzer, was the acting Director of the Bureau.
He initiated a review of Bureau programs that resulted in a report, “Reinventing the USBM” in
1994. This report recommended major changes both in the organization and programs of the
Bureau, particularly in research. In fact, the report seemed to indicate a shift of emphasis toward
environmental research and away from research devoted to miner health and safety. In
discussing health and safety technology, the report cited the following: “Significant problems
that existed 20 years ago have largely been solved or at least mitigated; research on these should
be reduced or eliminated” [USBM 1994].
Another report recommendation was to consolidate the mining health and safety research of the
Bureau at one “center of excellence” to be located at Pittsburgh. The Denver and Spokane labs
would have been made satellite centers that would continue their existing research, but were
considered likely to be reduced or eliminated in any future budget reductions. The Twin Cities
Lab was designated to become a center of excellence for environmental remediation, and thus
would de-emphasize the health and safety research that was being done there [USBM 1994].
While the recommendations for a reinvented Bureau were welcomed in some circles, the report
drew strong criticism from the mining industry. The American Mining Congress sent a letter to
the Bureau with comments on the reinvention report, opposing the large increase proposed in
research on environmental technologies and reductions in the other research programs. The
letter also stated that the mining industry was being ignored as a primary customer of the Bureau.
It ended by recommending that the draft reinvention report be scrapped [Knebel 1994].
In 1990, the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies published a report on
the competitiveness of the U.S. minerals and metals industry. This report also included sections
on the role of Bureau research in the competiveness of the minerals industry. The following
paragraph from the report describes the status of the Bureau within the federal system at that
time:
A basic problem in dealing with competition over agency responsibilities is the Bureau’s
location within the Department of the Interior, which has a traditional mandate to
preserve and maintain public lands. Because the Bureau’s mission involves mining,
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