According to the Associated Press, he has arranged with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection to pay off a settlement of $1.6 million handed down by the agency for water pollution at Dynamic Energy.

The news service also said more than $1 million in fines, as assessed by the US Mine Safety and Health Administration due to violations at several mines, has been paid in full.

An MSHA spokesperson could not be reached by press time, however many of the operator’s assessed fines have been high profile.

In March, the agency filed a request with the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission to reopen final orders that included $26,777 in civil penalties for its Pay Car Mining division.

It claimed the company – also known as the Justice Family Group – missed the 30-day deadline to contest this because of an “inadvertent mistake”

MSHA said five different operators controlled the Justices – the group owns Pay Car as well as 17 other mine operators and 33 mines – and filed a total of 15 requests for the same action between April 2008 and February 2009.

Of those 15 requests, the total associated penalties are $608,182.

Other Justice-controlled complexes with pending requests include Double Bonus Coal, Dynamic Energy, Frontier Coal, Bluestone Coal and Justice Highwall Mining.

“Pay Car Mining has not submitted any evidence to support its claims,” MSHA deputy assistant secretary for operations Michael Davis said at the time.

“Furthermore, we believe the operator’s conduct in this case is part of an overall pattern of carelessness in ensuring that penalty assessments are timely contested or paid.”

In response to Justice’s move, MSHA asked the commission to deny the 15 pending requests, most of which it objected to.

If the cases are reopened, MSHA has asked that it be on condition of full payment of all fines, to be refunded by the agency after the cases have been reviewed by an administrative law judge.

Last week, Justice completed the sale of coal assets from its Bluestone Coal subsidiary to Russian miner Mechel, giving the latter ownership of four West Virginia mining complexes, including eight active open cut mines and five underground mines.

Mechel paid Bluestone $436 million in cash, issued 83.3 million preferred shares, and assumed $132 million in debt.

Bluestone’s Kentucky and non-coal operations were not part of the deal.