Eighteen Months After a Fatal Explosion, Alabama Rolls Back Its Commitment to Monitor Explosive Gases Above Coal Mines

OAK GROVE, Ala.—Alabama officials charged with protecting residents from surface impacts of underground coal mining have notified the federal government that they’ve suspended plans to require that expanding mines monitor for potentially explosive methane gas.

The decision is a reversal of the state’s previous agreement with federal regulators spurred by a fatal home explosion above the expanding Oak Grove mine here in rural Jefferson County. 

After months of pressure from local residents and close media scrutiny, primarily a lengthy investigation by Inside Climate News, federal officials had issued Alabama a Ten Day Notice, a regulatory action meant to force state officials to address the risks of methane escape from active coal mines. 

Longwall mining, fairly common in Alabama’s coalfields, releases methane gas. That risks explosions if it escapes to the surface through cracks in land disturbed by the mining method. 

Within days of that December 2024 notice, state officials agreed to require that coal mining companies launch methane monitoring programs across Alabama, giving the operators 90 days to file updated plans outlining how they planned to comply. Later, at the request of the coal lobby, the state’s top mining regulator extended the deadline by six months, giving coal companies until Sept. 30 to file their updated plans. 

When that extension was announced, officials with the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement told the state they believed the delay was “excessively lengthy.” 

“If your original … response had contained an eight-month response time with little information/justification,” OSMRE’s Birmingham Field Office director wrote to Alabama regulators in March, “it is unlikely that your … response would have been deemed adequate.”

Now, as that extension has come to an end, the state regulator, Alabama Surface Mining Commission director Kathy Love, has notified OSMRE that she has “indefinitely suspended” any requirement for methane monitoring plans. 

Though the March 2024 home explosion was an “unfortunate” incident, Love wrote, her agency did not and does not believe that the expanding longwall mine poses an imminent risk to public safety. 

Jack Spadaro, a West Virginia-based former top federal mine safety engineer, said that Love’s conclusion could not be further from the truth. 

“Shame on her for making that statement,” Spadaro said. “If someone gets blown up and burned alive, that appears to me to be a danger to the health and safety of the public.”

D. Leon Ashford is an attorney representing the family of W.M. Griffice, the grandfather who lost his life as a result of the March 2024 explosion. In a statement, Ashford wrote that Love’s letter contains “factual inaccuracies and misleading statements.” Regulators have known for decades that fugitive methane poses a risk to citizens living above mines and should work to mitigate them, he wrote. 

“It is deeply troubling to read what appears to be a complete abandonment by ASMC of its responsibility to protect Alabama citizens from known and preventable harm from the release of fugitive methane,” he wrote. “The Griffice family, along with all the residents of the Warrior River Basin, deserve better. We urge the ASMC to rescind its request for OSMRE to ‘withdraw’ the Ten-Day Notice and implement the actions it previously represented it would take to protect the health and safety of the public.”

The ASMC and its director did not respond to a request for comment on this story. 

An “Unknowledgeable” Citizen

Eighteen months ago, Lisa Lindsay watched as her neighbor stumbled up to her home in rural Alabama. His body, covered in soot, was still smoking. Moments before, she’d felt the shockwaves of a nearby explosion surge through her body. 

Tim Griffice, still in shock, told Lindsay and her husband that the explosion at the next-door home of his brother, W.M., had knocked him out of bed. He ran out of the house to the sound of his nephew’s screams, he told them: “Help me! Help me!” 

Tim and his nephew, who was inside the home when the explosion occurred, went back into the structure to retrieve W.M. from the flames. About a month later, W.M. Griffice would die from the injuries he suffered that day. His grandson remained in hospital for weeks, recovering from injuries that are expected to impact him for the rest of his life. 

Members of the Oak Grove community, including Griffice’s family and the Lindsays, are all certain of what caused that explosion: the coal mine slowly expanding beneath their homes. Griffice’s family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the owners of the Oak Grove mine, alleging that their negligence in allowing the escape of explosive methane gas into the Griffice home was to blame. 

In court filings, Oak Grove has denied responsibility for the explosion and the resulting loss of life. The mine did not respond to a request for comment on this story. 

In the months that followed the explosion and Griffice’s death, neighbors including Lisa Lindsay repeatedly expressed their concerns about their own safety to state and federal officials, begging regulators to implement meaningful reforms that would prevent another tragedy in their community. 

In an interview with Inside Climate News, Lindsay said she’s likely the “unknowledgeable” citizen referenced by Love in her letter to OSMRE. 

Love’s statement that “there was no imminent danger to the health and safety of the public,” Lindsay said, was “absolutely inaccurate and infuriating.” 

Before moving to her current position as ASMC director, Love worked for years at a public accounting firm conducting internal financial audits for coal companies across the state. 

Lindsay said she doesn’t claim to be an expert on coal mining, but she added that it only takes common sense to know that what happened to her neighbor has the potential of happening again. 

“I admit to being an ‘unknowledgeable citizen.’ I am not a coal mine expert. I do not have years of working relationships in and with the coal mining industry, like many in this situation do have,” Lindsay said. “I just have the privilege of being a citizen of this state and country that gives me the right to ask questions, observe, learn and voice my opinion, even if, and when, it earns me a target on my back. That is part of serving your state, country and fellow citizens that anyone can, and should, do.”

The Experts’ View

While Lindsay may not be an expert on coal mining safety, Spadaro has spent years in coal fields across the country, first as a federal coal regulator and now as an expert who consults on cases involving coal mine safety, including methane-related explosions. 

He said that without additional regulations requiring methane mitigation and monitoring above the Oak Grove mine, which continues to expand, residents’ safety is at stake.

“There are still hundreds of people at risk in the areas underlying this mine, and they’re all at risk of having something similar happen to them,” he said. 

In the absence of state action to address the hazards from the escape of methane, Spadaro believes the federal government should revoke the state’s ability to regulate its own mining and take over the job of keeping residents safe themselves. 

“The State of Alabama has failed its mandatory requirement under federal law to protect the public from danger,” he said. “We’ve already had one house explode—a man who caught on fire and died and another person that was severely injured with burns. So the Alabama officials who are not going to require methane monitoring are in violation of federal law.”

Spadaro also balked at Love’s suggestion in the letter to federal officials that implementing methane mitigation and monitoring would be financially prohibitive for coal operators. 

“That’s just bullshit,” he said. “It’s not expensive to install methane monitors and venting devices to alleviate these hazards.”

Eva Dillard, a staff attorney for Black Warrior Riverkeeper, a nonprofit environmental organization, called the state’s decision to roll back the monitoring requirement “both astonishing and reckless.”

“Now Alabama mines have been given a pass by the ASMC and can delay indefinitely the enhanced subsidence and methane monitoring requirements that OSMRE imposed to safeguard the public from similar harm,” Dillard said.

She said that federal officials have relied on the anticipated implementation of these safety guardrails in approving other mine expansions in the state. Now, however, these projects will move forward in the absence of meaningful safeguards for residents living atop active mines. Rolling back these reforms, Dillard said, places the finances of coal companies “over the safety of surrounding communities.”

Spadaro said he believes that ASMC’s decision to ask the federal government to withdraw its regulatory action eight months after state regulators agreed to make necessary reforms is happening now simply because they believe the Trump administration will be more likely to side with coal companies over residents who fear for their lives. 

“It’s just opportunistic,” Spadaro said. “That’s all there is to it. Alabama wants to defy longstanding regulations and law, which seems to go hand in hand with what the Trump administration does.”

Reading the letter made Spadaro sick to his stomach, he said. 

“It’s disgusting that these people who run the Alabama program care so little about the individual who has already been killed and the public that is still facing these kinds of hazards.”