In all of 2010, the miners workers logged 486,453 hours with a lost-time incident rate of zero. This is compared to the national average of 3.72 incidents per 200,000 employee-hours for US underground mines.
Dugout Canyon crews are joined by the staff of the mine’s Castle Valley preparation plant, which has a perfect record in 2011 and has run incident-free for five straight years.
"We applaud Dugout Canyon's achievements and ongoing efforts toward working safely each and every day," Arch executive vice president of operations Paul Lang said.
"Dugout's achievements demonstrate our employees' deep-rooted commitment to safety, which is prevalent across our operations nationwide."
Canyon Fuel, with a staff of 900, is Utah's largest coal producer. It operates the Dugout Canyon operation as well as the Skyline and Sufco mines.
Early last month, Arch announced that production had resumed at Dugout Canyon after the mine had sat idled since June 22 following a “heating event”
Dugout Canyon mine produces approximately 2% of Arch's total annual output.
St. Louis-based Arch Coal is the second-largest US coal producer and supplies cleaner-burning, low-sulfur coal to fuel roughly 8% of the nation's electricity through its national network of mines.
The company also ships coal to domestic and international steel manufacturers as well as international power producers.
Across the producer’s mines last year, the overall lost-time incident rate was 0.46 per 200,000 employee-hours, or less than one-fifth the national coal industry average of 2.52 per 200,000 hours worked.
