One Hundred Years of Federal Mining Safety and Health Research

which disturbs and exploits the land, its mission is somewhat at odds with other interests
and concerns of the department. This situation apparently results in a lack of strong
support for the Bureau in executive branch decisions and congressional hearings
[National Research Council 1990].
To address this issue, the report recommended that the Bureau establish visiting committees to
examine its research program on a more regular basis. As a response to this recommendation,
the Bureau asked the NRC to assess the Bureau’s research programs and resources and make
recommendations to improve their quality. The NRC then established a Committee on Research
Programs of the Bureau of Mines in early 1994. In its first year, the committee visited three
Bureau labs and established a panel to conduct an in-depth review of the occupational health
research program. The first report of the committee documented many of the problems that beset
the Bureau and its research programs since the 1970s. The report noted that the Bureau had not
been growing at the same rate as other federal research agencies in defense, aerospace, and
energy:
That this did not happen may have been due, in part, to the association of the bureau with
an industry—mining—that had a worsening public image. Another reason, perhaps more
valid, may be the historical placement of the bureau within the Department of the Interior
(DOI). Long a leading department in peacetime, DOI in successive cold war
administrations lost ground, not only to other existing cabinet functions but also to new
departments and independent agencies. Taken together with the awkward relationship
between the bureau’s mission to assist in the exploitation of resources and DOI’s charge
to maintain, manage, and preserve public lands, a decline in the USBM was perhaps
unavoidable [National Research Council 1994].
This report pointed out two major problems faced by the Bureau: (1) it served a primary
customer, the minerals industry, which was generally viewed by the public as being of
diminishing importance; (2) it was located in a department that viewed its mission increasingly
as preservation of the environment on public lands, and was not favorable to a subordinate
bureau that supported mining of those lands. Certainly, both of these issues caused the
Department of the Interior to favor reductions in the Bureau budget.
The Bureau’s reinvention project and the DOI budget proposed a smaller Bureau with program
shifts toward environmental research. The fiscal year 1995 budget for the Bureau’s health and
safety research was to be reduced about 12 percent, while the budget for environmental research
was to be increased by 25 percent. The overall budget reductions for fiscal year 1995 led the
Bureau to plan the closure of its research laboratories at Rolla, MO, and Tuscaloosa, AL. The
proposed consolidation of the research programs at the new centers of excellence caused
research staff at the other centers to seek transfers, retirement, or employment elsewhere. The
overall result was a loss of research staff and a decline in morale for many of the Bureau
employees who remained.
A new threat to the Bureau arose in the 1994 Congressional election campaign, when the
Republican “Contract with America” included as one of its proposals the termination of the
Bureau along with several other agencies. The Republican Party took control of both houses of
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