Mine Safety

Protecting Utah Miners

Utah Mining Association members are world-class leaders in promoting and living safety and health as a core value. By striving for continuous improvement, the Utah mining industry has developed a safety culture that instills the values of safety leadership, accountability, and personal involvement in every employee. We provide our employees with the required training, tools, and caring leadership to prevent fatalities, injuries, or occupational illnesses so every worker goes home safely every day.

Safety Awards

The Utah Mining Association (UMA) is proud to continue our annual safety awards program. All UMA member companies are eligible to apply, and members can submit applications for multiple operations/facilities so long as each has a separate MSHA or OSHA number.

Many Utah mining companies invest in the development of safety innovations that exceed industry and regulatory standards. Lost time incident rates in the state have been better than the overall industry average for years. UMA is proud of its members and the successes that have been achieved through ongoing concerted efforts and significant investments and innovation in safety.

UMA Safety Innovation Award 2024: Wolverine Fuels

A key element of Wolverine Fuels safety program is the use of safety “Steering Teams”. Each operation selects 20 members of the mine workforce to be safety ambassadors for the mine. The Steering Team members consist of employees who are assigned to work in various positions and on various shifts so that these individuals can be a positive safety influence to all areas of the mine. The Steering Teams also include a safety representative from outside contract companies who provide contract labor to our operations. Specifically, the purpose of the Steering Team members are:

1. Coach and motivate peers to follow safety processes such as performing observations and pre-job inspections, wearing PPE, etc.

2. Provide meaningful feedback to Safety team members on risks, trends, hazards, employee morale, etc. from the areas they work in.

3. Review safety trends and statistics generated by observations, near-miss reports, and pre-job inspections and collaborate with other team members and staff on safety measures to address the negative trends.

4. Facilitate in identifying and removing safety barriers (Safety Barrier: An identified condition/circumstance that could lead to an injury)

5. Assist in revising / creating safe work procedures.

6. Provide general thoughts and ideas on how to make each job/task safer.

Each steering team member is selected by the mine General Manager, Safety Manager, and Safety Facilitator. Steering team members typically serve for 1 – 1.5 years. Steering team meetings occur monthly and are conducted by the Safety Facilitator. Each quarter, a combined steering team meeting occurs in a location away from the mines. This allows team members from all mines to collaborate and discuss safety challenges, solutions, and best practices and to receive training.