September 23, 2018 - Contrary to what some of our fellow Americans may think, West Virginians’ top priority regarding the coal industry is not ensuring as many miners as possible are working.

It is keeping them safe.

The state Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training may be able to do a better job of that, it has been suggested.

During interim committee meetings this week, state lawmakers heard results of an “audit” of the OMHST, conducted by the Legislature’s Performance Evaluation and Research Division.

PERD investigators noted that the injury rate in Mountain State coal mines has increased noticeably since 2012, after a period of steady declines. Still, the agency added, our state’s injury rate is not out of line with national numbers.

What troubled the PERD is that the state mine safety agency was unable to explain why the injury rate has gone up. According to the report presented to legislators, the audit “identified MHST’s lack of data analysis as one of the main reasons the agency is unable to explain the increasing injury rate.”

With that said, the PERD report emphasizes that the state mine safety and health agency does important work. It is not duplicative of federal government efforts, lawmakers were told.

All this leads up to a logical question to which legislators should get an answer. It is why the MHST is failing to conduct the kind of injury data analysis needed to explain the increase in injuries. Is it a lack of resources? Is it a simple failure to do the research?

Legislators should inquire into that. Surely some means of correcting the problem can be found.

The good news, however, is that the injury rate at underground mines, after spiking in 2016-17, appears to have dipped during the first six months of this year back to the lower levels recorded during the previous four years.

Still, keeping our miners as safe as possible is important to Mountain State residents. Legislators should dig deeper into the audit report to ensure the MHST is as effective as possible at that.