Comments on: Morgan Spurlock Hits the West Virginia Coal Mines for ’30 Days’

By: Jon Slaughter

Jon Slaughter — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:41:36 +0000

I live in Buckhannon WV. Which is ten minutes from Sago. My Future is coal mining. I’ll be working for ICG’s Imperial Mine. Which is about a mile up the road from Sago. A good friend of mine works in Shinston WV for Conslidated Coal,and what he told me is true,”If coal fails steel fails and if steel fails this country fails”. The people who put down coal mining have no clue what its like.

By: robert layne

robert layne — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:30:42 +0000

i live in wv and i thought that was purty cool of yall doin that on tv and i plan on workin underground in the mines

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:50:33 +0000

I am glad they made this episode. I am a mining engineer that works in uranium mines in Colorado and Utah and everyone always talks to me about what the media said and it irritates me because people immediately write it off when in actuality, mining is a rewarding profession. For coal mining it is 80 hours of training and for hard rock it is only 40, so you get plenty of training and that helps you to recognize a potential hazard. I was laughing when he talked about the brass tags because that is exactly the same thing they told me when I first learned about the brass tags. I can’t exactly speak too much for coal mining itself because because I don’t have much experience in working in coal mines, but I will say that people’s perceptions of underground mining is very wrong. I really wish they would have shown the MSHA inspectors there in the episode. That is the Mine Safety and Health Administration under the U.S. Department of Labor. They come every so often and give citations for safety violations which result in some hefty fines. MSHA is really picky about it too, they will pick out just about anything and write a citation for it. So I mean that lady was talking about the government needs to pass more laws to protect miners. Heck MSHA is at some of these coal mines twice a week writing citations making sure these mines are as safe as possible. Also, as soon as new technology comes out to make mines safer MSHA will require that they put it into their mines or else they’ll write them another citation. I think the problem is that people who aren’t in the mining industry just don’t understand and they make so many assumptions that these companies don’t care about these miners. I saw a bill that MSHA wrote for a company because of a fatality. It was over a million dollars and that doesn’t include the legal fees the family filed. Trust me these companies care about their workers, MSHA won’t let them off the hook. The people who are always talking bad about the mining industry are the ones who aren’t a part of it. The only response I can say to that is why don’t you do what Morgan did. Work in a mine for a month. Then, after you do that then if you still feel the same way then you can say what you think. But don’t say things about the industry if you have no idea if they are true or not because what you are doing then is just listening to what the media tells you.

By: Shea Gunther

Shea Gunther — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 02:51:49 +0000

I love 30 Days. The episode on coal was amazing, I just wish he hadn’t just left it hanging that we don’t have any options for getting off coal. An aggressive campaign focused on efficiency and industrial and local solar and wind can get us there in decades, not centuries. The political will hasn’t been there with BushCo. these past years, but I think Obama is going to flip it around and get things going in the right direction.

By: » Five By Five: Gitmo T-Shirts! What’s Required: Progress in the Commonwealth

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:43:23 +0000

[...] just quote EarthFirst, because it’s Friday and I’m dying to get out of here: On his first day, Spurlock was [...]