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An equipment operator was found dead at the Bolinder Resources facility on the Great Salt Lake's Stansbury Island on Thursday.

Tooele County sheriff's Lt. Travis Scharmann identified the victim as Allan K. Sherman, 56. He was not conscious, breathing or responsive when paramedics arrived about 8:25 a.m. and found him on a conveyor belt, Scharmann said.

State Occupational Safety and Health Administration and federal Mine Safety and Health Administration investigators were on the accident site Thursday afternoon. OSHA referred inquiries to MSHA, which was the lead investigative agency.

Amy Louviere, a spokeswoman for MSHA in Washington, D.C., said the accident occurred at the crushing and sampling unit of the Bolinder gravel operation, which is located about 7 miles north of Interstate 80.

"The victim was found face down on a belt conveyor [that had stopped operating]," she said. "There were no witnesses to the event."

Authorities did not release any information on injuries Sherman may have suffered, and had not ruled out the possibility his death may have resulted from natural causes, Louviere said.

Attempts to reach Bolinder Resources officials for comment were not successful Thursday.

According to records on the federal MSHA website, Bolinder Resources did not have a lost-time injury since it began running the crushing and sampling unit on July 14, 2009. The last reported injury occurred in 2003, when the operation was owned by McFarland & Hullinger.

Bolinder's sand and gravel operation received seven citations from MSHA in 2010, three of which were designated "significant and substantial." Those involved violations for not quickly correcting safety defects on a piece of equipment, allowing hazardous ground conditions to exist and not keeping workplace sufficiently clean.

MSHA fined Bolinder Resources $993 for the seven violations, a small amount by industry standards. The company has paid $600 in fines, but the rest — all of which came from three citations issued in May 2010 — is delinquent, agency records show.

Bolinder had 10 employees at the end of 2010. During the year, those employees worked 15,273 hours without an injury.