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• Safety Highlights

Safety Highlights

Montana facility reaches eight-year safety milestone

Bob Bartosh, chief operating officer of Dakota Coal Company, says the Montana Limestone Company milestone is a great source of pride for the team.The employees of Montana Limestone Company’s fine grind plant and rail load out facility reached eight years without a lost-time accident Dec. 16, 2011.

Montana Limestone is a subsidiary of Dakota Coal Company, which is a subsidiary of Basin Electric. The fine grind plant provides chemical grade agricultural products as well as limestone products for Stillwater Mining Company and Signal Peak Energy. The rail load out facility transfers and loads limestone onto railcars for sugar beet refineries. This facility will also load unit trains of limestone for the scrubber at Leland Olds Station. The fine grind plant and rail load out are located 70 miles south of Billings, near Warren, MT.

Bob Bartosh, chief operating officer of Dakota Coal, says the milestone is a great source of pride for the team. "We make working safely a top priority at our facilities, and this milestone goes to show that attention has paid off. I congratulate our employees on their hard work, and am so glad they’re able to go home every day safe and healthy."

One million safe hours achieved again at Leland Olds Station

October 6, 2011 - Employees at the Leland Olds Station near Stanton, ND, have bragging rights unmatched by any power plant in the Basin Electric generating family. They have achieved 1 million safe workhours without a DART incident twice. DART is an acronym for Days Away Restricted or Transferred, and it’s a measure of the severity of an injury that occurs in the workplace.

Mark Thompson, Leland Olds plant manager, said employees at the plant achieved 1 million workhours without a DART incident on April 7, 2010, and it’s still going. He said the tally as of Sept. 28 was 1,469,714 workhours. “Everyone at Leland Olds is involved in, and responsible for, safety. We hold regular safety meetings with all of our crews. We continually keep it at the forefront of our work,” he said. “However, if a specific safety issue needs attention, we address it immediately, through special safety meetings, job shutdowns, and action plans based upon what we uncover.”

The first million-hour safety record was achieved during the period of May 16, 1989, to Aug. 7, 1995, when employees reached 1.3 million workhours without a DART incident. The current record began Oct. 26, 2006.

There are 154 employees at Leland Olds Station.

“It is an amazing fact that we have worked safely in light of the workforce turning over,” Thompson said. “In the past five years that we have been working safely, Leland Olds has seen a 50 percent turnover of employees. The fact so many people have either joined the cooperative at Leland Olds, or entered new positions within the station, and have worked safely is a testament to our training programs, safety programs, and employee dedication to working safe.”