Five most-cited mines carry 76,630 citations between them

The five mines with the highest citation counts in our index have accumulated 76,630 MSHA citations combined. Marshall County Mine leads the group at 20,642 citations, followed by Marion County Mine (15,705), Harrison County Mine (14,739), Oak Grove Mine (12,984), and Bailey Mine (12,560).

The proposed penalties attached to these citations vary in ways that do not track citation volume neatly. Marshall County Mine drew $20,840,698 in proposed penalties, the largest of the five, while Bailey Mine, with 12,560 citations, carries $5,081,811 proposed, the smallest total in the group despite ranking fifth by count.

We have not published a denominator here. Reporting these five as a share of all citations across every indexed mine would require summing citation counts for the full archive, which this FACTS block does not include, so we cannot state what fraction of the total these 76,630 citations represent. Treat the combined figure as a raw magnitude for the top of the distribution rather than a proportion of anything.

A high citation count also reflects inspection exposure, not only conditions found. Large underground operations receive more inspection hours than small surface pits, and more hours create more opportunities for citations to be written. The count is a fair proxy for total enforcement activity at a mine, not for hazard per hour worked, which would need the inspection-hour base to normalize against.

Citation counts and proposed penalties are recorded per mine and per operator in our index, drawn from the public MSHA record and available for review mine by mine.