Former Mine Permits Director Reaches Settlement

{Louisville, Kentucky}…Former state mining official Ron Mills has reached a $270,000 settlement with Kentucky's Energy and Environment Cabinet. Mills was Kentucky's director of mine permits but was fired in November 2009. Mills later filed a suit saying he was wrongly terminated for opposing illegal coal mining practices. Mills opposed a state policy that grants mining permits to coal operators before they had obtained rights to enter mine property from all property owners on the permit. He said the policy was illegal and stopped it in August 2008 before it was reinstated the next year.