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Contractor exposed sewer line workers to trench cave-ins: OSHA

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An Illinois contractor has been cited by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration after inspectors found it failed to adequately protect workers from trench cave-in hazards.

OSHA on Monday announced it cited Breese-based Groundworks Contracting Inc. for one willful violation, four serious violations and one other-than-serious violation of federal trenching and excavation standards and proposed $77,147 in penalties.

The fines and citation stem from five Groundworks site visits between Nov. 30, 2022, and Jan. 20 of this year to the Silvercreek Crossing residential housing development in the City of Waterloo, where employees were found installing storm sewer lines without proper head protection and protection against potential trench cave-ins.

OSHA said Groundworks also had no competent person on site to inspect the trenches before the sewer line work began and it also failed, on one separate occasion, to protect a worker who was working in an elevated excavator’s bucket above a 15-foot-deep trench.

OSHA says trenching standards require protective systems on trenches that are deeper than five feet, and at the Groundworks construction site employees were working in trenches as deep as 18 feet.

Trenching hazards are considered among the construction industry’s most deadly hazards, with 39 workers suffering fatal injuries in trenching and excavation jobs in 2022, according to OSHA.