WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says President Donald Trump has chosen as the nation’s top mine safety official the former CEO of a coal company that repeatedly clashed with federal regulators when the Obama administration tried to boost industry-wide enforcement following the deadliest U.S. mine disaster in four decades.
The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports Trump nominated former Rhino Resources executive David G. Zatezalo as assistant secretary of labor for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. The announcement came at the start of the 3-day Labor Day weekend.
Zatezalo, of Wheeling, West Virginia, retired in late 2014 as chairman of Rhino after serving in several top posts. He joined the Lexington, Kentucky-based company in 2007.
Mining deaths are on the rise nationally after dropping for several years following the deaths of 29 miners in the April 2010 explosion at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia.
Pruitt, Perry, De Vos, Mnuchin, Sessions, this guy, the NASA guy…I hope Mueller acts soon. There won’t be anything left
except …FREEDOM …!!!1!!! —
How wonderful for coal miner’s, getting your job back only to die from a preventable mine accident…
Karma’s a carbon hard bitch…
Gee, what a surprise. I thought death of DACA would be the big drop this weekend, but this will be buried on page 12 of most newspapers, and forgotten.
Rhino has been cited 108 times since 2010 for $1.6M in fines, almost all of them under Zatezalo’s tenure.
Happy Labor Day!
“We saw a lot of happiness,” Trump said after touring the mine entrance where a wall fell on a WV miner, resulting in death.
“They’re really happy with what’s going on,” the president said.
“You’re going to be famous now,” he told a miner in a red “Trump is my president” T-shirt and invited him to come forward for a photo.
How fitting: a coal company named for an animal that’s also going extinct.