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The morning session opened at 9:00 a.m. and was presided over by Mr. Don Ross, Manager of Mines, Kaiser Steel Corporation,- Sunnyside, Utah. The first speaker was Mr. S. W. Zanolli, Partner in Law Firm of Webster and Kilcullen, Washington, D.C. Mr. Zanolli was born and raised in a coal mining community of Fredericktown, Washington County, Pennsylvania. He was educated at Washington and Jefferson College and graduate schools of the University of Pittsburgh. He served as an infantry officer in the European Theatre of operations during World War 11. He worked as' a handloader at Vesta No. 5 Mine of Jones & Laughlin during summers while attending Washington and Jefferson College. He worked at a variety of production jobs at No. 7 Mine. of Island Creek Coal Co. of Holden, West Virginia. Assigned to a variety of industrial relations assignments at Island Creek Coal' Company during 1949-51, attaining position of Supervisor of Personnel and Labor Relations. Served in many industrial relations assignments at U.S. Steel Corp. headquarters during 1953.-1967, attaining a position of Personnel Director-Heavy Products Operations. In January, 1968" he became a member of the Bituminous Coal Operators Association-as Executive Vice President. This past year he went back to practicing law and is a member of the Law Firm of Webster and Kilcullen, Washington, D.C. He is married and has five children.

Jan 1, 1973

The first session of the Rocky Mountain Coal Mining Institute was called to order by John T. Maulsby, Superintendent of Maintenance and Planning, Columbia-Geneva Steel Division, U. S. Steel Corporation, Dragerton, Utah, representing the past-president. W. K. Dennison, Jr., Superintendent. Koehler line. Kaiser Steel Corporation. Raton, New Mexico, who was unable to attend. Mr. Maulsby welcomed the members and guests, and introduced the President, A. Z. Dimitroff, Mining Electrical Engineer, Health and Safety, District 1-L, U. S. Bureau of Mines. Denver. Colorado. The text of President Dimitroff's address of welcome is as follows: The President's Remarks Guests and Members of the Rocky Mountain Coal Mining Institute: The distinct honor and privilege of officially welcoming you to this, the fifty-seventh regular meeting of the Institute, is indeed a pleasure. Your officers and committees have tried to provide a varied program which I am sure should have something of interest to all of us. The theme of this meeting, "Where Do We Go From here'?", appeared rather fitting for the In¬stitute this year because, as most of you know, until only two weeks ago we thought that this is the last time we will be able to meet at the Colorado Hotel, which has been the favorite spot of most members. Your officers and many of you were literally asking just that question.

Jan 1, 1961

Presiding: Herman Van Houten, Senior Marketing Counselor, Joy Mfg. Company, Pittsburgh, Pa., and John A. Reeves, Vice President, Mid-Continent Coal &Coke Co., Carbondale, Colorado. The Keynote Speaker, Senator Jennings Randolph from West Virginia, was unable to come due to pressing business in Washington. A film presentation on Surface Mining and Reclamation, "Energy Bridge," Courtesy of Pittsburgh & Midway Coal Mining Company, Denver, Colorado, was shown and was prefaced by comments from James V. Fisher. "Advantages of Longwall Mining in Western Coal Production" was a paper presented by David W. Wisecarver, Supervisory Mining Engineer, U.S. Bureau of Mines, Denver, Colorado. Mr. Wisecarver graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1949. After two years with International Harvester and two years in the U.S. Army, he joined the engineering staff on a Bureau of Mines underground mining operation in Virginia for eight years where he saw duties as mine surveyor, shift boss, and assistant maintenance superintendent.

Jan 1, 1977

By M. H. Forester

The Bituminous Coal Industry has for the past year been faced with a most serious problem. I am sure that you have had your own individual and local problems, as do we all. In my thirty years of practical experience with coal mining, I have never found an operating man nor a coal mine without problems. The very nature of mining, with so many unknown factors involved, precludes the absence of problems. But they are not insurmountable, and one should not dwell on them interminably. They should be recognized as a challenge to our ability and ingenuity to solve them, and once the proper solution is found, it should be applied and the problem dismissed. However, we find ourselves at the moment in the midst of a serious challenge to our very existence. In the early thirties, many in the industry welcomed the re-establishment of Unionism as a balance wheel, in the belief that the stabilization of wage scales would also stabilize prices and eliminate disastrous price cutting practices. The ultimate effects of having twenty-six years of benevolent paternalism in the administrative branches of Federal and State Governments with their labor courting policies, could hardly have been anticipated. And so with wages spiralling under government sponsorship, we have finally reached the point where competitive fuels, such as natural gas and oil are more attractive to the consumer, from the economic angle of cents per BTU cost, than coal.

Jan 1, 1953

By R. Dawson Hall

R. DAWSON HALL (The Coal Age, New York City) : Mr. Chairman and gentlemen: I do not feel that I have anything in particular to say. I have not prepared anything for an occasion such as this. I just came from New York City, and as one man said to me today, "That is not any recommendation in particular." (Laughter.) In answer to your request for a few remarks of a timely character I would say: One of the possibilities in the Rocky Mountain Region coal mines is the use of steel arches, posts and straps. The timber of the region seems unusually subject to dry rot and does not last long, especially in those places as in southern Wyoming, where the mine atmosphere is likely to contain a large quantity of carbon dioxide. It is true that, in many mines, much care is taken to drive out this gas and to arrange that the timber will have the fresh air that will prolong its life, but despite such provision much timber is subjected to speedy rot. Steel has made rapid progress in England, Germany and France and is recognized as an economy, not an extravagance. Frequent replacement of rotting wood and removal of broken rock are a source of great waste, risk and inconvenience in operation that together spell great cost. The very dryness of the mines and the lack' of acid water are favorable to the use of steel where support of roof or sides is necessary.

Jan 1, 1932

CHAIRMAN LITTLEJOHN: Some of the members will want to question Mr. Farnham on some of the things he has brought tip, so we will throw the meeting open for discussion. I am quite sure Mr. Farnham will be willing and glad to answer any questions that may be put to him. MR. HOLMAN: I would like to ask Mr. Farnham a question in regard to the Duckbill: How wide a face will it operate without moving the bill? MR. FARNHAM: The Duckbill is a device that was developed in the Union Pacific Mine at Rock Springs, within the last few months, and it is shaped something like, a dustpan, with discharge throat in the rear. They made one seven feet wide and found it was too wide, and the one they are using now is between three and four feet in width. The front section of the conveyor, which attaches to the duckbill, meshes into it to form a sliding section, and the front end of the Duckbill is pushed by the upper segments. I saw one used in a room twenty-four feet wide, and they drew it back after they cleaned out one room and pushed it forward again. MR. HOLMAN: You have no arrangement other than ratchet work? MR. FARNHAM: The ratchet is for forward working and back; the sections are made 12 or 13 feet long, and the stroke of the conveyor automatically works the ratchet; they can ratchet it back; it is a hand device. MR. HOLMAN: They just swing the end of the conveyor across the face to pick up the loose coal? MR. FARNHAM: Yes; they are also planning to use it endwise along the panel face, that and the room work both are quite new in their application, and I do not think the Union Pacific is giving out any results as yet, because the system has not been in use long. MR. HOLMAN: We are planning on putting one in very shortly. MR. HALL: I understand they can swing it over 30 degrees one way or the other, and it goes the same way easily because of the continual jar of the back and forward motion on a 60-degree swing. SECRETARY SHUBART: Take on a comparatively long conveyor, you can get quite a sweep, a large part of the circle. The Duckbill could command quite a large range. For a 12-foot entry, take a four-foot wide advance through the middle of the shot coal, with a 12-foot advance, ratchet back, swing the Duckbill to the rib and repeat; but I do not think they could get as much as 60 degree. on the end of the Duckbill without curving further back. The conveyor is light and not normally set on any permanent foundation. I saw one of Mr. McCarty's first machines, a rather rudimentary one, clean tip a 12-trot entry, 21 tons of coal, in 16 minutes, three men at the face and one at the loading end. MR. FARNHAM: The average time to clean the entries is about an hour-to clean up good-it wouldn't take but a short time; that is why they get this record of several cuts a shift. CHAIRMAN LITTLEJOHN: Are there any other questions you would like to ask Mr. Farnham? MR. HOLMAN: We were discussing this entry driving in regard to the entry loader; an entry loader in advance work, just what you have to do to place the jackbars with the sheave-blocks? Do you dig along the ribs after the coal is shot or do you have any other scheme that could be worked out to a good advantage? MR. FARNHAM: This record is a report I have just received from our Chicago office, without the full details, which I have written for. I am sorry I cannot give you the details. This was an Indiana or Pennsylvania mine, near Pocahontas, not the one where they had an accident. I assume they set the jacks ahead and swung and dumped the coal partly out with a scoop and partly by hand, but the application for that for entry driving is entirely new. The reports stated that they anticipated using that as a standard method of entry driving in the future. I will be glad to see that you get a copy of it when I get the report completed. MR. MONAY: Mr. Shubart, did you say they loaded 12 tons in 16 minutes? SECRETARY SHUBART: Twenty-one tons. MR. MONAY: How long did it take to change the machinery out of there

Jan 1, 1926

Jan 1, 1963

By Margaret N. Maxey

For the past quarter century, it is fair to say that the political agenda of Western industrialized societies has been driven by those opposed to forms of economic growth providing sustenance to a growing population. They regard growth as the major threat to their social philosophy which champions a wholly "new ethic of biocentric equality" or "living as if Nature mattered." This ethic demands that "a violent, plundering humankind" must abandon its alleged rape of Planet Earth and derive its ethical norms from pre-existing harmonies and fragile, precarious balance present in Nature. A Green political agenda appeals strongly to deep longings shared among many people whose temperament seeks tranquillity in a world of wild natural beauty uncluttered by dependency on tools and experts and specialists. According to proponents of the Green philosophy, our world is pregnant with enormous problems. Armed with expanded political powers, regulatory guardians at state and local levels have mustered their forces with shotguns cocked, poised to prod an ignorant and lazy citizenry to the altar for an exchange of vows with Environmental Ethics. Social engineers have skillfully discredited the traditional role of professionals in scientific engineering who are summarily dismissed as the failed architects of an industrial system pillaging the earth. They stand accused of producing unmanageable offspring - from mining minerals and energy resources to disposing of toxic wastes - whose disputed parentage and expectant crimes against humanity must be prevented by removing them from normal custody. Green critics claim that markets cannot be given custody of industrial offspring - pollutants, wastes, land-use abuses. Markets appear to have failed to provide equity to present and future generations. The only custodian with sufficient coercive power seems to be the regulatory bureaucracy. The upshot is a stark Hobson's choice - Shotgun Wedding vs. Custody Dispute. It derives its fateful predestination from an uncritical acceptance of several preconceptions which currently undergird the altar of Sustainability characterized by its acolytes as "a new and exciting doctrine." It is significant that Limits to Growth slogans of the 1970s have been displaced in the 1990s by the more palatable language of Sustainability. As a policy recommended to forestall an impending doom, Sustainability derives its credibility from dire predictions of global warming, ozone depletion, acid rain and the like. The Rio Declaration announced to the world in June 1992 that, although energy is essential to human well-being, its production and consumption in wealthy industrialized nations is unsustainable. It called for a complete overhaul of energy systems with nothing short of a total replacement of fossil fuels, uranium fission reactors, and large hydroelectric projects by means of so-called renewable energy sources, augmented by coercive regulations to force conservation and limit consumption demands. The social and political consequences of such a sweeping

Jan 1, 1995

CHAIRMAN EMRICK: We have a very interesting program this morning, of a mechanical nature, and I am sure you will all be very much interested in it. At the conclusion of each paper there will be time given for discussion, and we will be glad to have all of you enter into the discussion. Before we start the program, I want to ask the men who have been appointed chairmen of committees to come and get these folios, which contain papers concerning their particular committees. The Nominations Committee, of which David Brown is chairman, has a folio here. It has been customary every year to have a photograph of those in attendance taken, and I presume it is the will of those in attendance this morning to have their pictures taken. We plan to do that about a quarter of twelve, approximately, this morning in the room instead of going outside as we have heretofore. Frank Miller has an interesting an¬nouncement to make. Frank, if you will just take about five minutes to tell your story.

Jan 1, 1934

Jan 1, 1961

PRESIDENT MOSES.: The meeting will please come to order. Will you kindly state your names prior to making any statements, in order that we may deep the record straight? The first paper this morning is a joint one on vocational training, by D. W. Rockey, H. A. Tiemann and Wm. Moorhead. Mr. Rocdey. (Applause.) D. W. ROCKEY (State Superintendent, Industrial Education, Santa Fe, New Mexico) (Mr. Rocdey's notes not received in time for publication.) MR. TESCHER: I would like to ask you, Mr. Rocdey, you say you gave the Phelps-Dodge Corporation financial assistance; to just what extent was the State obligated, and how much assistance was given, etc.?

Jan 1, 1927

Pictured on these pages are seven of the eight RMCMI Scholarship Award Winners for the 1993- 94 year followed by a brief profile. Seven of the eight winners were present as guests of the Institute at the June convention in Snowmass Village, Colorado to receive recognition at the Institute Awards Luncheon Monday, June 27, 1994. Due to another conflict. Jason T. Dale of Wyoming was unable to attend. Each state vice president sewed as the host for the collegiate winner. In addition to receiving a plaque from the Scholarship Chairman. Alan Czarnowsky, each winner receives $750 tuition credit for the coming academic year, as well as transportation, hotel lodging and meals at convention as guests of the Institute. Because this is a continuing award, the winners from the previous year will receive another $750 for tuition credit in their senior year if they have maintained good academic standing and are recommended by their university. A resident from each of the eight RMCMI member states is selected from among Board approved institutions. Criteria for these awards to be made in the spring annually is (1) That the award be made to a sophomore student and used as tuition during the junior year. (2) That the recipient be both a U.S. citizen and a resident of the member state. (3) That the recipient have good academic standing, be pursing a degree in a mining related field and have an expressed interest in Western coal as a possible career path. The scholarship program includes curricula other than those in the mining departments, but in engineering disciplines, such as geology, mineral processing and metallurgy. Contributions to this worthy project are tax deductible to each individual RMCMI member or his firm. Through annual donations of $100 or more, the Patrons of the Institute fund the scholarship program and the various vice presidents contribute the travel expenses to convention for these outstanding young collegiates. Donations to this worthwhile program may be made payable to RMCMI Scholarship and mailed to the RMCMI Office. 3000 Youngfield Street, Suite 324, Lakewood, CO 80215. Profiles of the 1994 Scholarship Winners follow. [ ] ARIZONA WINNER Christy L. Brandt University of Arizona Tucson. Arizona Christy Brandt is the 1994 RMCMI scholarship winner from Arizona. She is majoring in Mining Engineering at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, but recently is considering switching to Environmental Engineering with emphasis on mining. She told the Scholarship Chairman that if she wasn't part of the solution, she was part of the problem. Christy has received numerous awards during school including being on the honor roll and university chapters of Society of Mining Engineers. Besides her academic activities, which includes being a member of Student Council, Christy is quite an athlete and enjoys basketball, softball, tennis, golf, and soccer. Last summer, she worked as a safety assistant/laborer for the Magma Copper Company. This summer, Christy is working in the safety department at Magma Copper Company's Pinto Valley Mine in Arizona. [ ] COLORADO WINNER Jason P. Markle Colorado School of Mines Golden, Colorado Jason Markle is the 1994 RMCMI

Jan 1, 1994

By Glen A. Knox

The writer has been asked to set forth for this Institute, the experience of the past eleven months in the mining operation conducted at Sweetwater Mine in which coal has been produced by the use of Link-Belt Conveyors on long faces. The coal in this mine has an average of six feet three inches in thickness, and lies on an average pitch of five degrees. The roof is a sandy shale of medium hardness and has been generally considered as good top in the room and pillar method of mining. When our company became interested in conveyors, the writer visited most all of the mines in the East where conveyors and other mechanical methods of mining were in use and decided that the modified method of w-hat is in use at the Norton-West Virginia mine would be the most feasible for our conditions. We in- stalled three hundred feet of conveyor as an experiment to see whether or not our roof could be handled and taken care of on long faces. This three hundred feet was installed as two separate conveyors, one as a face conveyor-100 feet in length, the other as a heading conveyor that delivered the coal into the mine car on the main entry. This face was worked directly on .the strike and down the pitch. This did not prove to be a success as the caving of the roof carried over to the working face and necessitated propping between the conveyor and the face and it was also necessary to shovel coal on the conveyor up the pitch. After working out this block, 200 feet in length, we installed these two conveyors at a place adjoining this worked out block, but on a half V shape shown on the sketch. This block of coal was sixty feet wide. This method proved to be very successful. We cut a place, moved the conveyor against the face before shooting and carried two rows of cribs between the conveyor and the cave, and caved the roof every second cut. After working out this block we were satisfied that this system was feasible with our mine. We then ordered twelve hundred feet more of the same type as the trial conveyor with the exception of a very few modifications. We then installed this fifteen hundred foot unit on the four faces shown on the sketch, with one hundred feet to each face, two hundred feet on each heading and three hundred feet on the main conveyor that delivered the coal into the pit cars. We also had a head and rear section for each of the four advancing places shown on the sketch. As the sections were taken out of the heading conveyors they were installed on the advancing conveyors, and when the faces approached the main conveyor, the main conveyor was taken out and installed in the next uphill or main conveyor place. The roof caved very well in line of the points and was broken about every twenty feet. It broke in a straight line and did not curve at each V. We encountered no trouble unless we permitted one of the points to get behind. The maximum tonnage possible to be produced on this method was estimated to be seven hundred and twenty-five tons a day, assuming that all places were cut and cleaned up in one shift, and this we did for several consecutive days. While this was a success from a cost standpoint, we felt that we could

Jan 1, 1925

By Wm. H. Woodhead

Improved methods of mining have accompanied the introduction of mechanical loading, of which there are a great many varieties, but this multiplicity of mining brings new problems and greatly increases the importance of managing over a few years ago. Few mines operating today have been opened with the intention of mechanizing throughout. The problem of mechanization is to change over a mine heretofore operated by hand methods and to select machinery that will fit the old system with the least number of changes, the aim being not to disrupt or to completely change the original plan. The organization of mechanical and electrical forces is a problem in mechanical loading, and each individual mine presents its own problems. Plans which may succeed in one mine may fail in another and upon the management rests the responsibility of deciding the best method in each case.

Jan 1, 1930

President W. K. Dennison, Jr., called the final session of the Rocky Mountain Coal Mining Institute to order, and introduced H. A. Cornell, Portland Cement Association, Ft. Collins, Colorado. Mr. Cornell explained that the Portland Cement Association was not a sales organization, but is supported by the major manufacturers of portland cement. The research laboratories of the association are constantly endeavoring to improve the quality of cement, as well as promote new markets, new uses, and new ideas. The association works with engineers, contractors and universities, making available to them the results of their research. Mr. Cornell stated that numerous booklets and bulletins were available on request for any phase of construction with concrete. Mr. Cornell presented a film, "How to Make Quality Concrete," to the members of the Institute. D. W. Lyke, General Electric Apparatus Service Shop, Denver, Colorado, was introduced by President Dennison, who presented a film, "A-Hunting He Would Go." Following the film, Mr. Lyke stated that his firm was not confined to electrical equipment, but to all types of equipment, and asked the members to feel free to call for assistance at any time. These two films concluded the Manufacturer's Hour, and President Dennison opened the final business meeting of the session. Robert F. Bowie, of the Auditing Committee, read the Treasurer's Report, and complimented Mr. Whiteside on the commendable state in which the books were found. The Treasurer's Report is as follows:

Jan 1, 1960

President Robert Wilson opened the meeting at 9:00 a.m. He introduced William A. Bear, General Manager Bear Coal Company, Inc., Somerset, Colorado, who presided over the session. George Nugent, Peter Kiewit Sons' Company, Sheridan, Wyoming, presented a most interesting film "Montana Mine Reclamation." His biography follows: George Nugent first entered the coal business in 1943 when he developed Peter Kiewit Sons' Co.'s first coal mine-Big Horn Coal Company at Sheridan, Wyoming. Since that time he managed an expansion program for P.K.S. in mining that resulted in the development of two other producing mines - Rosebud Coal Sales Company at Hanna, Wyoming and Decker Coal Company at Decker, Montana, in which Pacific Power and Light is a partner. Applications are now pending for a third mine. Black Butte, a joint venture of P.K.S. and Rocky Mountain Energy Company, near Point of Rocks, Wyoming. Nugent is a Past President of the Wyoming Chapter, Association of General Con- tractors, Wyoming Mining Association and Rocky Mountain Coal Mining Institute. He was President of Big Horn Coal Company and Rosebud Coal Sales Company as well as Manager of the Mining Division of Peter Kiewit Sons' Co. and Decker Coal Company when he retired Jan. 1, 1975.

Jan 1, 1976

[Page Minutes 5 Present Status of Petroleum Industry 9 F. M. Van Tuyl. Developments Along the Line of Low Heat, Carbonization 13 A. C. Watts. Uses for Fine and Pulverized Coal 14 C. A. Allen. Have Mining Engineers Accepted All That Developments in Machinery Apply? 16 R. Dawson Hall. Coal Mine , Accidents and State Mining Law 23 D. Harrington. Harmony and Co-Operation 26 H. F. Nash. Personal Dangers 28 John Bevan. Methods of Improving Safety and Health Conditions 29 C. A. Allen and A. L. Murray. The Economic Relation of Accidents and Preventable Diseases to the Coal Mining Industry 39 Recent Developments in the Use of Electricity in Mines 43 Graham Bright. Discussion of Graham Bright's Paper 48 Mine Safety Work at Dawson, N. M 49 W. F. Murray. Mine Safety Work 54 Eli Follett. Wire Rope in Mining Operations 56 James F. Howe. Discussion of F. E. Shepard's Address 69]

Jan 1, 1922

By R. Dawson Hall

*This paper was not read as it arrived too late. In the beginning of the last century "cottage industry" gave way to the factory system, and at present manufacturing that was once performed in homes is done wholly in factories. Division of labor came into being at the same time. In earlier years rarely more than a half-dozen men worked at the home of the master workman. Each group performed all the labor involved in changing crude material to the finished article, and many of the masters in a cottage industry themselves took the raw material and converted it by their own efforts into a highly specialized product ready for the market. Mining has in a degree moved in the same direction. But for the most part every man still has his own room. Pick miners in many places get their cars at the room neck, push them to the face, undercut their coal, drill their shot-holes, load and fire them, complete the breaking down of their coal, fill their cars, push them to the entry and also test their roof for weak spots, examine for gas, timber their rooms, bail them out and lay their own track. Mining is still in a way a "cottage" industry, only the cottage is a room in the mines instead- of a home. The men who gather the coal and take it to the tipple are in a measure like the middlemen who went from cottage to cottage and gathered the product of the owners or "masters", to use the term then prevalent. The change in ordinary industry from old methods to new came with machinery. The machines then introduced needed power for their operation, and distribution of power from house to house was too great a task for those times. Power could not readily be taken to machinery where water power only was available. It was necessary for the machinery and its workers to go to the power. Nor when steam was harnessed could every cottage have its steam engine. Compressed air and electricity had not arrived, and con-

Jan 1, 1922

Thomas J. Parmley C. N. Sweet T. C. Jenkins W. S. Iliff, Sr. Warren Bracewell L. C. White Fading away like the stars of the morning, Losing their light in the glorious sun; Thus would we pass from earth and its toiling, Only remembered by what we have done.

Jan 1, 1947

Good Morning. Thank you for your kind welcome, Lyle and thank you for having me here today. I spoke at the fall meeting of the Utah state RMCMI in Price and it's nice to be invited back. I can see by the program that you have two great days of interesting and informative meetings, including the mine rescue team exhibition and the safety recognition award presentations. As you all know, I am here standing in for Dave Lauriski, who is in China with Secretary of Labor Chao. As you also know, Utah is near and dear to his heart - and so is the Rocky Mountain Coal Mining Institute. I want to assure you Dave would be here if it were at all possible. But it is my good fortune that I could come in his place. We have made great progress as an Agency thanks to the hard work and dedication of MSHA's employees. But we are always looking for new ways to solve problems and continue to send more miners home safe and healthy every day. And we have been working on some great ways to do that, including thinking strategically. During my presentation today I'm going to talk about where the Agency is in terms of our transformation to the MSHA of the 21st century, a little bit about how we got to be where we are, and then describe our roadmap to the future state. And I'm going to focus on the significance of our plan and the planning process to demonstrate the implication for the mining industry. Former President Dwight Eisenhower once said, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." Now I do like Ike, but I would have to take exception to the first part of the sentence. I have found plans and the planning process to be indispensable - the plan to give me a roadmap to my goal, and the process to focus me on the steps I must take to get there. We all know that having a strategic plan makes the difference between success and failure. We've seen it time and time again, in business, in our lives - and in government: Having a strategic plan is crucial to success. And the process of making the strategic plan is crucial to its success. Putting together a workable strategic plan - a good roadmap - that will successfully lead you to your goals requires a thorough, careful process that takes into account each factor that you may encounter along your way to success, as well as those with whom you will travel. In order to talk about our current plan I want to take you back to three years ago, when Dave Lauriski went to Washington to lead MSHA. He knew that change was in the air. Dave was confirmed as Assistant Secretary with 30-plus years experience in the coal mining industry, and more than 20 years of experience in dealing with

Jan 1, 2004