(a) In this title the following words have the meanings indicated.

(b) “Bureau” means Bureau of Mines.

(c) “Department” means the Department of the Environment.

(d) “Director” or “Director of the Bureau” means Director of the Bureau of Mines.

(e) “Drift” means a horizontal passageway, level, or gangway, driven from the surface outcrop into the coal bed.

(f) “Entry” means a passageway in a coal bed which is approximately level and is used for haulage, traveling way, or ventilation. In a dipping bed, entries on the strike are known as “levels” or “gangways” and to the dip are known as “slopes”.

(g) “Excavations and workings” includes any excavated portion of a mine, whether abandoned or being worked. The term also includes any underground workings, shafts, tunnels, and other ways and openings including those being sunk or driven, together with roads, appliances, machinery, and material connected with them below the surface.

(h) “Face” means the advancing breast of a mine working place, either of an entry or room.

(i) “Gassy mine” means a mine or portion of a mine in which methane is found by an approved or permissible flame safety lamp, detector, or device, or by air analysis in an amount of 0.25 percent or more. Once a mine is determined to be a gassy mine, it is always so considered. In this title, the words “gassy” and “gaseous” are synonymous.

(j) “Mine” includes a shaft, slope, drift, or inclined plane connected with an excavation penetrating coal stratum, which excavation is ventilated by one general air current, and any appliance and equipment for hoisting and extracting coal. It includes any part of the mining property and plant on the surface or underground, which contributes directly or indirectly to the mining or handling of coal and is connected by one general system of mine railroads, over which coal may be delivered to one or more points outside the mine. The word also includes a portion of a mine or opening whether or not the mine or opening employs a system of railroads, when the sense so requires.

(k) “Operator” means any person, partnership, or corporation who removes or intends to remove more than 250 tons of coal from the earth by surface coal mining or deep coal mining within 12 consecutive calendar months in any one location.

(l) “Panel” means a unit area in a system of mining by which the mine is divided into large rectangles or panels isolated or surrounded by solid pillars of coal into which pairs of entries are driven for the development of rooms and the extraction of pillars.

(m) “Secretary” means Secretary of the Environment.

(n) “Shaft” means an opening, the axis of which is approximately vertical, extending downwards from the surface. It includes an underground shaft driven between two levels.

(o) “Slope” means an inclined opening in a dipping coal or fireclay bed, and an inclined tunnel to a coal or fireclay bed.

(p) “Superintendent” means the person who, on behalf of the operator, has immediate supervision of a mine.

(q) “Working place” means a room, breast, entry crosscut, or pillar where coal is being mined or extracted and where at least one miner per working shift of the mine regularly is employed until the place is finished or stopped.