This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Carbon County's Dugout Canyon coal mine has gone two years — exceeding 1 million man-hours of work time — without a lost-time accident reportable to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, company officials said.

In addition, the mine's Castle Valley Preparation Plant has been incident-free for five consecutive years, said Kim Link, a spokeswoman for St. Louis-based Arch Coal, whose Canyon Fuel Co. subsidiary operates Dugout Canyon and two other Utah coal mines, Skyline and Sufco.

Together, those three mines are Utah's largest producers and employ 900 people.

In working 486,453 hours last year, the zero lost-time incident rate posted by Dugout Canyon miners was far below the national underground average of 3.72 incidents per 200,000 employee hours.

"Dugout's achievements demonstrate our employees' deep-rooted commitment to safety, which is prevalent across our operations nationwide," said Paul Lang, Arch Coal's executive vice president of operations.

The Salt Lake Tribune