US DOL’s Mine Safety and Health Administration is here for survey

Representatives of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration are on island for the first time to do a “fact gathering” and survey in the CNMI.
Western District manager Wyatt Andrews and assistant manager Paul Belanger met with Labor Secretary Edith Deleon Guerrero yesterday.

One of the main points of their visit is to determine whether there are indeed operations that can be considered mining sites in the islands, aside from those which are known to be so.

“What we suspect, we know that, we’ve been told that there are some other quarries,” Andrews said.

He also mentioned that they will be having tours until tomorrow to check sites that could be considered mining ones.

“Anytime that a raw material is extracted from the ground and it’s processed…once they take it out of the ground, process it, put it in trucks, move it out, it’s considered mining. And there’s many of this operations that people don’t recognize as mining operations,” Andrews said.

Part of the definition of “mine” under the Mine Act is that it is: (a) “an area of land from which minerals are extracted in nonliquid form or, if in liquid form, are extracted with workers underground; (b) private ways and roads appurtenant to such area; and (c) lands, excavations, underground passageways, shafts, slopes, tunnels and workings, structures, facilities, equipment, machines, tools, or other property including impoundments, retention dams, and tailings ponds, on the surface or underground, used in, or to be used in, or resulting from, the work of extracting such minerals from their natural deposits….”

“Anywhere that there’s development, whether they’re building roads or making asphalt, there has to be mining. It’s aggregate that makes these materials so this has to be mined,” he added.

According to the team, they are not here for enforcement yet but more on for education.

“If there are mine sites here, and if they are, we will be coming and have the best approach to talk to these mine operators, bring them together, educate, and train and then any enforcement that will come will be later down the road,” Andrews said.

“This is not an enforcement; this is having information and fact gathering,” Guerrero said, adding that the federal department will be having a sit down to talk about the needs and assistance that may be provided to the CNMI.

According to Andrews, this was the first time that they are conducting a tour of this kind for the Commonwealth, even as it was determined earlier on that MSHA is required to implement the Mine Act of 1977 in the CNMI as well as in Guam, American Samoa, and other U.S. territories.

“At some point, it was overlooked or someone determined that there wasn’t funding to come out or whatever,” he said.