Safety

Safety is a guiding principle at Arch Coal and our subsidiary operations. Our top value is making sure that every miner returns home safe and healthy at the end of every shift. For the most recent calendar year (2015), we achieved our best safety record in company history. Our Total Incident Rate (TIR) was 0.99 and was more than three times lower than the industry average. This marked the tenth consecutive year Arch ranked first among our major diversified coal industry peers in safety. (*Source: MSHA Coal Controlling Report, MSHA Mine Injury and Worktime)

Award-Winning, Proactive and Innovative Safety Practices

Over the years, we have been recognized for safety, including MSHA's top national honor - the Sentinels of Safety Award - for calendar year 2001, 2007, 2008, two for 2011, 2013 and 2015. We believe our accomplishments are a testament to Arch's deep-rooted culture of treating safety as a value and the strong participation of our employees in the process.

The ultimate goal of the Arch Coal family of companies is to achieve A Perfect Zero. With an industry leading rate and a focus on prevention, we strive for zero safety incidents every year.

 

Our mines adopted a behavior-based safety program (BBS) in 2006 that enlists virtually every one of our employees to identify at-risk behaviors before an incident occurs. As a result of BBS and other proactive, upstream safety measures, Arch is the safety leader among our peer group of diversified, U.S. coal companies.

At Arch, we are constantly exploring ways to leverage technology to improve our safety performance and improve the safety and health of mine employees industry wide. The Leer mine was recognized with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) 2016 Technology Innovations Award in the coal sector for its innovative stockpile safety system. Through the collaboration of operations and IT professionals a stockpile system - designed to mitigate potential stockpile dozer incidents and reduce risk - was developed and implemented at the operation.

Working safely enables Arch to continue doing what we do best: producing coal responsibly and efficiently.