29 Quotes by Tony Oppegard

There are some good recommendations. It's a good start.

With the price of coal so high, you have operators coming out of the woodwork, trying to get into any seam of coal they can to make a quick buck, opening up a lot of little dog holes.

We have a serious, serious problem in Kentucky with failure to report accidents.

Basically, if you see 73 accumulation violations, that's a sign of a mine operator who is not too concerned with safety. It's troubling if you see that many.

I can't over-emphasize how important pre-shift examinations are. It is a key provision put in the act to protect miners' safety.

If an operator is undercapitalized to the extent that he can't pay his fines, he shouldn't be in business. You can bet he's skimping on safety.

From the time that the company got its first unwarrantable failure, that put them on alert that those examinations weren't being conducted properly. Such unwarrantable failure is just intolerable, and that should be referred to the U.S. attorney for possible criminal prosecution.

What we have now is terrible. Just a thin telephone wire with a speaker phone attached to it.

I would say that these are indicative of an operator who wasn't going to let safety get in the way of production.