Kentucky River, located in Hazard County in eastern Kentucky, achieved the best 2012 safety record among the nation’s largest processing plants, with crews working 184,859 hours in 2012 with an incident rate of zero.
The national average in the processing facility class is 1.39 incidents per 200,000 employee hours.
The award, handed out by the NMA in Washington, DC, on October 30, is Arch’s eighth since 2002.
“This is true safety excellence to accomplish a perfect safety rate for more than three years while shipping millions of tons of American coal,” president and chief executive officer John Eaves said.
“We're honored to be recognised as the nation's safest in our class,” Hazard president and general manager Greg Feltner added.
“The dedicated employees at Hazard's loading facility have operated safely for more than half a million employee-hours.”
The NMA chooses six winners annually for Sentinels of Safety awards from large and small operations in three category types, with a minimum of 4000 hours logged without a lost-time incident.
