74-24.2. Definitions.

In this Article, unless the context otherwise requires:

(1) The term "accident" means 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) The term "Advisory Council" shall mean the Advisory Council or body authorized to be established under this Article.

(3) The term "agent" means 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) The term "Commissioner" means the Commissioner of Labor of North Carolina.

(5) The term "Director" means the person authorized under G.S. 74-24.19 and appointed by the Commissioner for the purpose of assisting in the administration of this Article.

(6) The term "imminent danger" means 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) The term "mine" means 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) The term "miner" means any individual, other than an operator or an agent, working in or about a mine.

(9) The term "operator" means an individual, partnership, association, corporation, firm, subsidiary of a corporation, or other organization owning, operating, leasing, controlling, or supervising a mining operation.

(10) The term "repeated violation" means 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) The term "State" means the State of North Carolina.