One of the founders of a nonprofit law firm in Eastern Kentucky dedicated to protecting coal miners, their families and the rural Appalachian landscape from extractive industries like coal mines has died.
Steve Sanders, 74, founding director of the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center in Whitesburg died Jan. 10 in Lexington. He retired from ACLC in 2018 after serving as the center’s director for 17 years.
Sanders and two other lawyers launched the nonprofit legal firm in 2002 to represent coal miners affected by black lung, as the disease rebounded in central Appalachia…