The five most-cited mines by total MSHA citations

Ranking every mine in the archive by total MSHA citations, the top five are Marshall County Mine (20,642 citations, $20,840,698 proposed), Marion County Mine (15,705 citations, $16,368,055), Harrison County Mine (14,739 citations, $11,884,304), Oak Grove Mine (12,984 citations, $16,616,498), and Bailey Mine (12,560 citations, $5,081,811). The gap between first and fifth is roughly 8,000 citations. The proposed penalties do not track the citation ranking cleanly: Oak Grove sits fourth by citation count but second by dollars proposed, while Bailey leads no category and carries the lowest proposed total of the group.

The premise we set out to test was whether all five mines fall within a single two-state cluster. The FACTS available here list only the mine names, citation counts, and proposed penalties, with no location figure to place each mine in a state. We cannot confirm or reject the two-state grouping from these numbers, and the mine names alone are not a reliable guide to location.

The dollar amounts shown are proposed penalties, meaning sums assessed rather than sums collected. A high citation total records enforcement volume. Reading it as a measure of hazard or noncompliance would require dividing citations by inspection-hours or employment and accounting for citation severity, none of which this ranking does.

Taken for what it is, this list is a fair proxy for the total count of MSHA citations recorded against a mine across the archive window. A mine can top it because inspectors logged more line items there, and that is not the same as conditions being worse than at a mine with a lower recorded count.

The full citation and penalty history is available per mine and per operator through the index.