By Kim Choe
The Spring Creek mine is closed for business after being issued a prohibition notice by the Department of Labour.
The owner of the West Coast mine is in talks with the department today.
Solid Energy, which owns Spring Creek, near Greymouth, insists its workers weren't put at risk.
It's the second mine to be closed in a month and follows the recent appointment of an acting chief mine inspector.
The DoL says Solid Energy failed to properly investigate three incidents in as many weeks.
- A diesel generator caught fire, injecting high concentrations of poisonous carbon monoxide into the mine
- A main fan stopped working with no alert to management for 90 minutes;
- A smaller underground fan stopped working twice, but did not stop the mining machine as it should have.
Solid Energy says it's disappointed its own high standards haven't been met, but maintains staff safety wasn't compromised.
"In each case we have done an investigation on those incidents, and the department is saying well you've put actions in place to deal with those incidents, but we need to see more action to ensure those incidents don't occur again," says Barry Bragg.
Spring Creek management stopped production because of safety concerns for six months, from just before the Pike River mine exploded in November 2010 through until May last year.
The DoL says Spring Creek can't reopen until it's provided a full explanation of what happened and made changes to engineering and management systems. It's not the only mine under investigation.
Last week the new acting chief mine inspector also closed a small gold mine in the Coromandel because it too failed to meet safety standards.
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