Foreman was supposed to keep Kentucky coal miners safe. He broke rules instead.
A foreman who was supposed to help keep workers safe at a Kentucky coal mine has admitted violating a federal safety standard.
Steve Demoss, who was safety director at an Armstrong Coal Company underground mine in Muhlenberg County, pleaded guilty last week in federal court.
Demoss faces up to a year in prison. The crime also carries a fine of up to $100,000.
Demoss is the third former Armstrong Coal supervisor to plead guilty in an alleged effort to subvert controls aimed at limiting the amount of coal dust employees breathed at the Parkway Mine, in Muhlenberg County, and the Kronos mine in Ohio County.
Breathing in coal dust is the cause of black lung, a progressive disease that cuts down a person’s ability to breathe and leads to premature death.
Coal mines are supposed to use ventilation and other measures to limit the amount of dust miners are exposed to, and to measure miners’ exposure.
Armstrong Coal, which has since gone bankrupt, was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case.
The company cut corners to reduce costs “at the expense of exposing the miners” to an increased risk of black lung, the indictment said.
The case against Armstrong Coal started in June 2014 when Justin Greenwell, who ran a roof-bolting machine at Parkway, had his wife call the tipline at the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration to report that Armstrong was allegedly violating dust-control rules, according to a memorandum from prosecutors.
Federal inspectors showed up the next day and found dust monitors, which miners are supposed to wear for their full shift, hanging in an area of the mine with less dust than at the working face.
The company blamed the problem on a manager and fired him.
The company later fired Greenwell and two others who had complained about safety problems at the mine, Brandon Shemwell and Michael “Flip” Wilson, though all three won their discrimination claims against the company.
Prosecutors said Greenwell and other former Armstrong employees are prepared to testify about how supervisors circumvented the rules to make it appear miners were being exposed to less dust than they really were.
For instance, Greenwell said Demoss and Billie Hearld, another supervisor, sometimes took away his dust pump before he finished his shift, meaning it wouldn’t accurately record how much dust was around him, according to the prosecution memo.
Another supervisor, Keith Casebier, allegedly had miners put their dust monitors inside their lunch boxes to shield then from dust, the memo said.
Greenwell will testify that an X-ray showed he didn’t have black lung when he started working for Armstrong in 2008, but was later diagnosed with the disease, prosecutors said.
Demoss admitted as part of his plea that at times between January 2013 and February 2018, he removed dust pumps from miners before the end of their shifts and signed cards certifying the test results without doing the required checks.
The others who have pleaded guilty in the case are Hearld and Ron Ivy, another safety director.
The court record indicates charges against a fourth man charged in the case, Jeremy Hackney, will be diverted.
Charges are pending against former Armstrong officials Casebier, Charley Barber, John Ellis Scott, Dwight Fulkerson and Glendal “Buddy” Hardison.
They have pleaded not guilty.
The case is one of the largest federal mine-safety prosecutions in Kentucky in years.
