Murray on Sunday described the layoffs - impacting all three of Murray's Utah mines - as temporary. Miners told The Salt Lake Tribune Saturday that 270 employees were to be laid off.

The Tower mine will be reopened as soon as a team of engineers and mining experts say it's safe, Murray said. He did not provide a time frame. Workers will have the option of relocating to other Murray mines in Illinois or Ohio.

According to Murray, many of the same experts called in to evaluate the Crandall Canyon mine are now looking at the Tower mine. Murray said last week he has asked the team to determine the Tower mine's stability and whether a remote-operated long-wall mining system could be implemented.

The depth of the coal seam at the Tower mine is now about 2,800 feet below the mountain's surface and planned to be another 400 feet deeper - "deeper than any long-wall machine has ever successfully been used in the United States," according to a recent report by the Utah Geological Survey.

Safety concerns at the mine include "bounce" problems similar to those at the Crandall Canyon mine and ventilation problems that were forcing a decrease in production this year, the report said.

The layoffs are coming from the Tower and West Ridge mines in Carbon County, and the Crandall Canyon mine near Huntington. Miners will get free housing, but anyone wanting to return to Utah on the off week must pay his or her own way.

Shane Winward, 40, was laid off Sunday after about a year of working for the Tower mine. He said he will not go to the Midwest. He has a wife and four children as well as a farm in Wellington with 50 head of cattle and a hay field.

“I've got a chance of losing that,” Winward said.

Miners who were at Murray's meetings with employees over the weekend said he lashed out at Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and The Tribune, pinning part of the blame for the layoffs on them.

Huntsman last week called Murray's treatment of the trapped miners' families “unconscionable.” He also called for thorough federal inspections of Murray's Utah mines and created a committee to examine the state's coal industry.

Murray said the governor should stop the criticism or Utah could lose 700 jobs.

A news release issued Sunday by UtahAmerican, a co-owner in the Crandall Canyon and West Ridge mines, said Utahns are outraged by Huntsman's comments and the “very flawed reporting” of The Tribune. In the release, UtahÂAmerican executives described the lengths to which Murray has gone to rescue the trapped miners, help their families and preserve the jobs of Utahns.

The governor, they said, “has displayed an unbelievable lack of understanding of what has been transpiring over the past three weeks.”

Huntsman spokeswoman Lisa Roskelly on Sunday said Huntsman is "hopeful the changes that are necessary to make [the Tower mine] safe will be done and these miners will be able to return to a safer environment."

As for Murray's assertion that Huntsman has shown a lack of understanding, Roskelly said Huntsman has met with all the families.

"He has seen the anguish that the families have experienced during the past three weeks," she said.

Many residents of Carbon and Emery counties interviewed Sunday applauded Huntsman's intervention and blasted Murray.

“The governor was completely right,” said Rae Lyn Peak.

Anita Brady, whose husband works at the Deer Creek mine, said those in the community "know how [Murray] runs his business . . . and it's not good. It's not the mines. It's the way they were mining them.”

Danny Erickson of Wellington, a cousin of Don Erickson and one of the miners laid off Sunday, commended the governor rather than Murray for making sure the Tower mine is safe. The layoff, he said, “is just pushing more quickly to get out of mining.”

Wellington said his 9-year-old daughter had already begged him to stop mining.

“I enjoy it, but it's not safe,” he said.

---

* JUDY FAHYS contributed to this report.