US Department of Labor awards $250,000 in Brookwood-Sago Grants to promote mine safety, health education

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Labor today announced the award of $250,000 in Brookwood-Sago grant funding to two organizations to support education and training initiatives that will help identify and prevent unsafe working conditions in and around the nation’s mines.Administered by the department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration, the Brookwood-Sago Mine Safety grant program helps recipients create training materials, conduct mine safety training, and educational programs designed to protect the safety and health of miners. In awarding the grants, MSHA focused on innovative plans for mine safety and pilot programs that may be useful for miners working in a broad range of positions. The grants also put an emphasis on programs and materials targeting workers in smaller mines that train mine operators and miners about MSHA standards, and emergency response training.Established under the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act of 2006, the grant program honors the miners lost at the Jim Walter Resources #5 mine in Brookwood, Alabama, on Sept. 23, 2001, and at the Sago Mine in Buckhannon, West Virginia, on Jan. 2, 2006.The recipients of t...