July 2, 2025 - Months after the federal government pushed to shutter dozens of mine safety centers across the country, the Mount Pleasant office — the busiest in the nation — will close in August after years of carrying out death and injury investigations of coal workers, the Post-Gazette has learned.

The Mine Safety and Health Administration will end its lease for the district office, which oversees inspections of hundreds of mines across Pennsylvania, in a sweeping move that will shift the safety oversight to other offices in the state and West Virginia, said two sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The closing of the Mount Pleasant office is the latest in a series of cutbacks by the federal government to rein in costs at the same time the Trump administration is pushing to boost coal production nationally.

Although the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — a cost-cutting panel once led by billionaire Elon Musk — initially sought to cancel the leases of 34 mine safety offices, it recently reversed course and left most of them intact, except Mount Pleasant and three others.

The move to shut the offices has taken inspectors by surprise and raised alarms among work safety advocates who worry that the decision will disrupt the government's ability to inspect mines, investigate accidents and enforce critical safety standards.

Joe Main, a former undersecretary of Labor who once headed MSHA, said the shuttering of a district office takes months and puts enormous pressure on the new centers to take on those duties.

“It’s concerning how this will affect the safety of the miners,” said Mr. Main, who served in the top post for eight years ending in 2017. “It takes months to carry out just one closure.”

One of the bedrocks of the agency's safety offices, Mount Pleasant has overseen more than 6,300 inspections of coal mines in the past decade, more than any other district office in the country, records show.

The government is expected to move the oversight responsibilities of the Mount Pleasant office to district centers in Warrendale and Morgantown, W.Va., both about an hour away.

The other centers to be closed include Beaver Dam, Ky., Prestonsburg, Ky. and Longview, Texas, according to DOGE’s website.

DOGE projects the closing of the Mount Pleasant office, which has been in the same business center for 15 years, will save $800,000. The Department of Labor, which oversees MSHA, did not respond to detailed questions from the Post-Gazette. 

Staff members at the district office in Mount Pleasant — about 22 in all — were not officially told of the shutdown until late last month, according to the sources, who requested anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak for the agency.

It’s unclear how many staffers will relocate to the district offices in Warrendale and Morgantown.

While safety standards have improved dramatically from decades ago when hundreds of workers perished in coal mines every year, the job of working in mines is still considered by safety experts to be one of the most dangerous in the U.S.

Over the past decade, more than 100 workers have died in coal mining accidents — including tunnel collapses and explosions — and hundreds more have been maimed or permanently injured, data shows.

During that time, Mount Pleasant oversaw one in every seven investigations into fatal accidents, more than any other district office.

Nine of those cases took place in the past five years, including the death of a 32-year-old worker who was crushed under a massive roof collapse in 2021 in a mine in Jefferson County, Pa.

The demise of the Mount Pleasant office also comes in the midst of a resurgence of black lung disease, an incurable illness in miners who have inhaled toxic coal dust for years. In central Appalachia, 1 in 5 miners has come down with the disease — a rate experts have described as an epidemic.

In April, federal officials announced deep cuts to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), a branch of the Centers for Disease Control that studies black lung and performs screenings for thousands of miners.

A federal judge ordered the government to reverse some of those cuts.

It's not clear whether the closing of Mount Pleasant will impact the efficiency and regularity of safety inspections, which are supposed to be carried out four times a year in every underground coal mine.

One source who has worked at Mount Pleasant for years said the office already was understaffed by two inspectors and faced a backlog of mining safety plans filed by coal operators that require approval from regulators.

Mount Pleasant, which also oversees the work of other field offices, covers a wide swath of Pennsylvania and other parts of the Northeast. 

“[The district office] will be erased from the map,” the official said.