The following definitions apply in this Article:

(1)        Accident. – An unexpected event resulting in injury to, illness of, or death of a person or persons as a result of mining operations and any mine explosion, mine ignition, mine fire, mine inundation, mine cave-in, or other event which could have readily resulted in serious physical harm.

(2)        Repealed by Session Laws 2021-82, s. 1, effective July 8, 2021.

(3)        Agent. – Any person charged by the operator with responsibility for the operation of all or part of a mine or supervision of the miners in a mine, and for the purposes of this Article includes contractors, subcontractors, or independent contractors employed by the operator to perform any work or services at, in, or on the mine.

(4)        Commissioner. – The Commissioner of Labor of North Carolina.

(5)        Director. – The person authorized under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 74-24.19 and appointed by the Commissioner for the purpose of assisting in the administration of this Article.

(6)        Imminent danger. – The existence of any condition or practice in a mine which could reasonably be expected to cause death or serious physical harm immediately to any miner if such condition or practice is not abated at once.

(7)        Mine. – An area of land and all private ways and roads appurtenant thereto, structures, facilities, machinery, tools, equipment, shafts, slopes, tunnels, excavations, and other property, real or personal, placed or constructed on, under, or above the surface of such land by any person, used in, or to be used in, or resulting from (including the reclamation of mined areas or the storage of materials in mined areas), or to facilitate the work of exploring for, developing of, or extracting by any means or method in such area all minerals, inorganic and organic, from their natural deposits. The term “mine” also includes all mineral processing and milling facilities except those used in the processing of source materials as defined in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended.

(8)        Miner. – Any individual, other than an operator or an agent, working in or about a mine.

(9)        Operator. – An individual, partnership, association, corporation, firm, subsidiary of a corporation, or other organization owning, operating, leasing, controlling, or supervising a mining operation.

(10)      Repeated violation. – A violation for which an operator was issued a notice or an order on an inspection and which is found to exist again on the next regular inspection, even though the violation was abated within the time fixed for abatement.

(11)      State. – The State of North Carolina. ?(1975, c. 206, s. 2; 2021-82, s. 1(a).)