Ben Viljoen

Ben Viljoen, born in the Lake Tahoe area in 1953, got his first job in mining at the age of thirteen at the Utah Mine in Virginia City. A self described garden tramp (one who changes jobs frequently to learn new skills but prefers to stay in one state), he learned open-pit mining and also had experience operating his own small contracting business. Viljoen was interviewed by Victoria Ford in 1996.

     I should throw something in for the state mine inspectors. Of any bureaucracy, these guys are just what I’m sure the people who came up with bureaucracies had in mind. Our guys with state of Nevada are just 110 percent. You’ve got one guy covering the same area as five MSHA [Mine Safety and Health Administration] inspectors. They do all the training, or they’re capable of doing all the safety training, free, absolutely free. They’ll lend you movies, help you out. You can call them up in the middle of the night for some kind of suggestions and stuff. (Well, you could. I don’t want to antagonize them.)
     The Nevada guys, when they’re hired, they have to have a certain amount of underground experience and a certain amount of pit experience, so you can actually rationalize with them. “I know we aren’t doing this quite to the letter of the law, but here’s the reason, see. We plan to do this so that we can do that, which will make the whole thing safer.”
     With the MSHA guys, this is some guy that might have worked in a coal mine in Virginia or just got out of college, and he says, “Well, I’m sorry, but the law states . . . .” Like they had a radiation leak down in southern Nevada, so all the MSHA inspectors went on in there. They passed federal legislation that they’re going to check for radiation leaks, and they come parading around once a year to every mine and check for radiation—just asinine stuff. A lot of the older MSHA people are more like the Nevada inspectors. They’ve had enough experience, been around enough, but as these guys are retiring, they’re being replaced by up-and-coming bureaucrats.