MSHA offering up to $400K in safety grants

The United States Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) April 16 announced the availability of up to $400,000 in funding through its Brookwood-Sago grant program to support education and training to help identify, avoid, and prevent unsafe working conditions in and around U.S. mines.

Brookwood-Sago grants focus on powered haulage safety – such as reducing vehicle-on-vehicle collisions, increasing seat belt use, and improving belt conveyor safety – emergency prevention and preparedness, examinations of working places at metal and nonmetal mines, or other programs to prevent unsafe conditions in and around mines.

Established by the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act of 2006, this program promotes mine safety in honor of the 25 miners who died in 2001 at the Jim Walter Resources #5 mine in Brookwood, Alabama, and in 2006 at the Sago Mine in Buckhannon, West Virginia.

Funding will enable grant recipients to develop training materials, provide mine safety training or educational programs, recruit mine operators and miners for the training, and conduct and evaluate the training.

MSHA said it will give special emphasis to programs and materials that target miners at smaller mines, including training miners and employers about new agency standards, high-risk activities, or hazards identified by MSHA.

To submit a grant application, go to http://www.grants.gov.

The closing date for applications is June 9 and MSHA will award grants by Sept. 30.

–SHANE LASLEY