Former coal company execs to go on trial for skirting rules

Former coal company execs to go on trial for skirting rules

SeattlePI.com

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LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A group of former coal company officials will go on trial in Kentucky next week for allegedly skirting federal rules meant to reduce deadly dust in underground mines.

The four men, who worked for now-bankrupt Armstrong Coal, ordered workers at two Kentucky mines to rig dust-monitoring equipment to pass air quality tests, federal prosecutors said. The inhaling of dusty air in mines can lead to an incurable and fatal disease called pneumoconiosis, or black lung, which has killed tens of thousands of coal miners.

The rare prosecution of coal company officials over safety violations is similar to a case brought against a former West Virginia coal executive in the wake of a 2010 coal mine explosion that killed 29 miners.

The defendants in the Kentucky case include Glendal “Buddy” Hardison, a former high-ranking Armstrong official who ran all of the company’s western Kentucky mines. Hardison was added to the case in 2019, a year after the original indictment charged eight Armstrong supervisors and safety officials who worked at the company’s Kronos and Parkway mines.

Hardison met with two Armstrong subordinates in 2013 and ordered them to make sure the mines' dust monitoring equipment stayed in compliance, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office. One of those subordinates, Ron Ivy, who was a safety director at the Kronos mine, reached a plea agreement with prosecutors in 2019.

Along with Hardison, former Parkway mine superintendent Charley Barber; the Parkway mine's former safety director Brian Keith Casebier and Dwight Fulkerson, a section foreman, are facing conspiracy charges at the trial. Each is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States.

A misdemeanor conspiracy conviction in 2015 led to a one-year prison sentence for former Massey...

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