Consol spokeswoman Lynn Seay told ILN the employee was located within the cab of the bulldozer.

“Dive and rescue teams completed a series of pipe dives over the weekend that helped to more clearly define the exact position and location of the bulldozer,” she said.

“With this new information, the teams repositioned the pipe and adjusted the water jets late last evening, in preparation for a dive this morning.

“This morning an opening was cut in the canopy of the bulldozer and the divers confirmed that our employee is inside the bulldozer cab.”

Seay stressed Consol’s previous statements that the recovery was complex, noting it would take both time and precision to execute the recovery of both the victim and the vehicle in a proper and safe manner.

“We do not have an estimate on how long it will take to recover our employee from the bulldozer,” she said.

Consol confirmed it was maintaining regular communications and providing updates to the family, who requested the identity of the worker not be released.

With the recovery of the body underway, Seay said investigations by the US Mine Safety and Health Administration, the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training and other parties could advance to determine the cause of the accident.

The worker was one of three swept into the slurry pond the morning of November 30.

The other workers, who were operating pickup trucks, were able to escape without serious injury.

In a preliminary report released on Friday, MSHA called the upstream face collapse a “massive failure”

“A section of the saddle dam measuring about 650 feet long, 20 to 25 feet above the water's surface and 70 feet back from the water's edge, broke and slid into the impoundment,” officials said.

The miner’s death, according to MSHA data, is the 19th in US coal in 2012.

Federal officials classified the missing miner as a fatality on Friday in its preliminary findings.