MINE HEALTH AND SAFETY STATE GRANTS | MSHA 2024 1

Opportunity Information: Apply for MSHA 2024 1

The Mine Health and Safety State Grants opportunity is a discretionary grant program run by the U.S. Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) under CFDA 17.600. Its overall purpose is to strengthen mine safety and health nationwide by supporting state, tribal, and territorial partners that help prevent mining fatalities, injuries, and occupational disease. The program aligns with the Department of Labor's broader workforce goals of expanding access to "good jobs" by ensuring workplaces are safe, fair, and protective of workers, including supporting miners' ability to speak up about hazards and understand their rights on the job.

Funding is intended to help governments and public partners build and improve the systems that keep miners safe. That includes developing and enforcing state mining laws and regulations, improving state workers' compensation and mining occupational disease laws and related programs, and improving on-the-ground safety and health conditions through coordinated Federal-State cooperation. A major emphasis is on training and education, recognizing that state training programs are often a primary source of safety and health instruction for people who currently work in mines or plan to enter the industry.

MSHA is explicitly encouraging applicants to prioritize training for groups and workplaces that can be harder to reach or that may have fewer resources, especially small mining operations, underserved mines, miners, and independent contractors. The opportunity also stresses diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, including delivering training in languages miners can understand and ensuring workers have meaningful access to instruction and information. In addition to technical safety content, MSHA wants training programs to cover miners' statutory rights, such as the right to a safe and healthy workplace, the right to refuse unsafe work, and the right to have a voice in safety and health conditions at the mine.

A key priority for this funding cycle is support for training tied to MSHA's newer rules, particularly rules addressing lower exposure to respirable crystalline silica and stronger respiratory protection practices, along with a safety program focused on surface mobile equipment. MSHA plans to share compliance assistance materials with grantees, and it encourages grantees to adapt or develop training resources so operators and miners understand how these rules affect daily work practices and site conditions. Applicants are strongly urged to make training on these new rules a central part of their programs.

Beyond those rule-related topics, MSHA encourages grantees to address a range of recurring high-risk areas in mining. These include mine emergency preparedness and mine rescue, electrical safety, safety risks involving contract workers and customer truck drivers, better training for new and inexperienced miners, and training for managers and supervisors who perform mining tasks. MSHA also highlights underground pillar safety and fall protection (falls from heights) as important subjects. Another consistent theme is prevention of fatal incidents: training programs are encouraged to focus directly on the causes of fatal accidents in mining and how to prevent them, with MSHA pointing applicants to its fatality reports database as a reference source.

Eligibility is broad within the public sector and includes state governments, county governments, city or township governments, special district governments, public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, federally recognized tribal governments, and certain tribal organizations. The opportunity also references Minority Serving Institutions (for example, HBCUs, Hispanic-serving institutions, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institutions) as relevant stakeholders in the ecosystem, reflecting the program's equity and access priorities.

Key administrative details include an opportunity number of MSHA 2024 1, an application deadline of August 20, 2024, and an award ceiling of $800,000. MSHA anticipates making about 56 awards. Overall, the grant program is designed to reinforce Federal-State partnerships that improve mine safety enforcement capacity and expand high-quality, practical training that reduces fatalities and disease while ensuring miners understand both safe work practices and their rights.

• The Mine Safety and Health Administration in the education sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "MINE HEALTH AND SAFETY STATE GRANTS" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 17.600.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2024-06-21.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-08-20. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $800,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 56 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Others.

Apply for MSHA 2024 1

[Watch] Creating a grant proposal using the step-by-step wizard inside the applicant portal: